Dark Piper

Dark Piper Andre Norton I I HAVE HEARD it stated that a Zexro tape will last forever. But even a second generation now may find nothing worth treasuring in our story. Of our own company, Dinan, and perhaps Gytha, who now work on the storage of all the old off-world records may continue to keep such a history of our times. But we do not run our reader now except for a pressing need for technical information, since no one knows how long its power pack will last. Therefore, this tape may keep its message locked for a long time unless, ages from now, those off-world do remember our colony and come seeking to learn its fate, or unless there shall arise here people able to rebuild machines that have died for want of proper repairs. My recording may thus be of no benefit, for in three years our small company has taken a great backward leap from civilized living to barbarism. Yet I spend an hour each evening on it, having taken notes with the aid of all, for even young minds have impressions to add. This is the tale of the Dark Piper, Griss Lugard, who saved a handful of his kind, so that those who walk as true men should not totally vanish from a world he loved. Yet we who owe him our lives know so little about him that what we must in truth set upon this tape are our own deeds and actions and the manner of his passing. Beltane was unique among the Scorpio Sector planets in that it was never intended for general settlement, but instead was set up as a biological experimental station. By some freak of nature, it had a climate acceptable to our species, but there was no intelligent native life, nor, indeed, any life very high in scale. Its richly vegetated continents numbered two, with wide seas spaced between. The eastern one was left to what native life there was. The Reserves and the hamlets and farms of the experimental staffs were all placed upon the western one, radiating out from a single spaceport. As a functioning unit in the Confederation scheme, Beltane had been in existence about a century at the outbreak of the Four Sectors War. That war lasted ten planet years. Lugard said it was the beginning of the end for our kind and their rulership of the space lanes. There can rise empires of stars, and confederations, and other governments. But there comes a time when such grow too large or too old, or are rent from within. Then they collapse as will a balloon leaf when you prick it with a thorn, and all that remains is a withered wisp of stuff. Yet those on Beltane welcomed the news of the end of the war with a hope of new beginning, of return to that golden age of “before the war” on which the newest generation had been raised with legendary tales. Perhaps the older settlers felt the

chill of truth, but they turned from it as a man will seek shelter from the full blast of a winter gale. Not to look beyond the next corner will sometimes keep heart in a man. Since the population of Beltane was small, most of them specialists and members of such families, it had been drained of manpower by the services, and of the hundreds who were so drafted, only a handful returned. My father did not. We Collises were First Ship family, but unlike most, my grandfather had been no techneer, nor bio-master, but had commanded the Security force. Thus, from the beginning, our family was, in a small measure, set apart from the rest of the community, though there was nothing but a disparity of interests to make that so. My father lacked ambition perhaps. He went off-world and passed in due course through Patrol training. But he did not elect to try for promotion. Instead, he opted to return to Beltane, assuming, in time, command of the Security force here that his father had commanded. Only the outbreak of the war, which caused a quick call-up of all available trained men, pulled him away from the roots he desired. I would have undoubtedly followed his example, save that those ten years of conflict wherein we were more or less divorced from space kept me at home. My mother, who had been of a techneer family, died even before my father lifted with his command, and I spent the years with the Ahrens. Imbert Ahren was head of the Kynvet station and my mother’s cousin, my only kin on Beltane. He was an earnest man, one who achieved results by patient, dogged work rather than through any flashes of brilliance. In fact, he was apt to be suspicious of unorthodox methods and the yielding to “hunches” on the part of subordinates—though, give him his due, he only disapproved mildly and did nothing to limit any gropings on their part. His wife, Ranalda, was truly brilliant in her field and more intolerant of others. We did not see much of her, since she was buried in some obtuse research. The running of the household fell early on Annet, who was but a year younger than I. In addition, there was Gytha, who usually was to be found with a reading tape and who had as little domestic interest as her mother. It must be that the specialization that grew more and more necessary as my species entered space had, in a fashion, mutated us, though that might be argued against by the very people most affected. Though I was tutored and urged to choose work that would complement the labors of the station, I had no aptitude for any of it. In the end, I was studying, in a discontinuous manner, toward a Rangership in one of the Reserves—an occupation Ahren believed I might just qualify for—when the war, which had not affected us very directly, at last came to a dreary end. There was no definite victory, only a weary drawing apart of the opponents from exhaustion. Then began the interminable “peace talks,” which led to a few clean-cut solutions. Our main concern was that Beltane now seemed forgotten by the powers that had established it. Had we not long before turned to living off the land, and the land been able to furnish us with food and clothing, we might have been in desperate straits. Even the biannual government ships, to which our commerce and communication had sunk in the last years of the war, had now twice failed to arrive, so that when a ship finally planeted, it was a cause for rejoicing—until the authorities discovered it was in no way an answer to our needs but rather was a fifth-rate tramp hastily commandeered to bring back a handful of those men who had been drafted off-world during the conflict. Those veterans were indeed the halt and the blind—casualties of the military machine. Among these was Griss Lugard. Although he had been a very close part of my childhood, the second-in-command of the force my father had led starward, I did not know him as he limped away from the landing ramp, his small flight bag seeming too great a burden for his stick-thin arms as its weight pulled him a little to one side and added to the unsteadiness of his gait. He glanced up as he passed, then dropped that bag. His hand half went out, and the mouth of a part-restored face (easy to mark by the too smooth skin) grimaced.

“Sim—” Then his hand went to his head, moving across his eyes as one who would brush aside a mist, and I knew him by the band on his wrist, now far too loose. “I’m Vere,” I said quickly. “And you are”—I saw the rank badges on the collar of his faded and patched tunic—“Sector-Captain Lugard!” “Vere.” He repeated the name as if his mind fumbled back through time for identification. “Vere—why, you’re Sim’s son! But—but—you might be Sim.” He stood there blinking at me, and then, raising his head, he turned to give his surroundings a slow, searching stare. Now he gazed as if he saw more than his boots raising planet dust. “It’s been a long time,” he said in a low, tired voice. “A long, long time.” His shoulders hunched, and he stooped for the bag he had dropped, but I had it before him. “Where away, sir?” There were the old barracks. But no one had lived there for at least five years, and they were used for storage. Lugard’s family were all dead or gone. I decided that, whether Annet had room or not, he could guest with us. But he was looking beyond me to the southwest hills and to the mountains beyond those. “Do you have a flitter, Sim—Vere?” He corrected himself. I shook my head. “They’re first priority now, sir. We don’t have parts to repair them all. Best I can do is a hard-duty hopper. And I knew I was breaking the rules to use that. But Griss Lugard was one of my own, and it had been a long time since I had had contact with someone from my past. “Sir—if you wish to guest—” I continued. He shook his head. “When you’ve held to a memory for some time”—it was as if he talked to himself, almost reassuring himself—“you want to prove it, right or wrong. If you can get the hopper, point her west and south—to Butte Hold.” “But that may be a ruin. No one has been there since Six Squad pulled out eight years ago.” Lugard shrugged. “I’ve seen plenty of ruins lately, and I have a fancy for that one.” With one hand he fumbled inside his tunic and brought out a palm-sized metal plate that flashed in the afternoon sun. “Gratitude of a government, Vere. I have Butte Hold for as long as I want—as mine.” “But supplies—” I offered a second discouragement. “Stored there, too. Everything is mine. I paid half a face, strong legs, and quite an additional price for theButte , boy. Now I’d like to go—home.” He was still looking to the hills. I got the hopper and signed it out as an official trip. Griss Lugard was entitled to that, and I would face down any objection on that point if I had to. The hoppers had been made originally to explore rough country. They combined surface travel, where that was possible, with short hops into the air to cross insurmountably rough terrain. They were not intended for comfort, just to get you there. We strapped into the foreseats, and I set the course dial for Butte Hold. Nowadays it was necessary to keep both hands on the controls. There was too apt to be some sudden breakdown, and the automatics were not to be trusted. Since the war the settlements on Beltane had contracted instead of expanded. With a short supply of manpower, there had been little or no time wasted in visiting the outlying sites, abandoned one after another. I remembered Butte Hold as it had been before the war—dimly, as seen by a small boy—but I had not been there for years.

It was set on the borders of the lava country, a treacherous strip of territory that, in remote times, must have lighted most of this continent with titanic eruptions. Even the eroded evidence of these volcanoes was still spectacular. Of late years it was an unknown wilderness of breaks and flows, a maze of knife-sharp ridges with here and there pockets of vegetation. Rumor had it that, beside the forbidding aspect of the land itself, there were other dangers—from beasts that had escaped the experimental stations and found this forsaken range an ideal lair. No one actually had evidence of such. It was rumor only. But it had grown into tradition, and a man wore a stunner when he ventured in. We left the road at a turn trace so dim by now that I could not have found it without Lugard’s direction. But he gave that with the surety of one seeing markers plain in the sun. And very shortly we were out of the settled land. I wanted to talk, but I did not quite dare to ask my questions. Lugard was so plainly occupied with his thoughts. He would find other changes on Beltane, less tangible than those of the abandonment of old landmarks but nonetheless sharp. The settlements had been drained of certain types of men: first the guard, and then scientists and techneers. Those left had unconsciously, perhaps consciously in some ways, changed the atmosphere. The war had not come close enough to make any great impression on our planet. It remained a subject of reports, of attrition of supplies and manpower, of growing irritation as men, buried in their own chosen fields of research, had been commanded to explore other paths for refinements in killing. I had heard enough to know that there had been a deliberate dragging of feet in sections that had been set to war problems. And there had been angry outbursts five years back, threats passed between the last commander and such men as Dr. Corson. Then the commander had been ordered off-world, and Beltane settled down to a peaceful existence. The sentiment now on Beltane was pacifist—so much so that I wondered whether Lugard would find an accepted place among these men bent so strongly on keeping matters as they were and had been. He had been born on Beltane—that was true. But, like my father, he was of a Service family, and he had never married into one of the settlement clans. He spoke of Butte Hold as his. Was that literally true? Or did it mean that he was sent here to make ready for another garrison? That would not be welcome. Our trail was so badly overgrown that I reluctantly took to the air, skimming not far above the top of the brush. If Lugard was the forerunner of a garrison, I hoped they would number among them some techneer-mechanics with training in the repair of vehicles. Already our machines had become so unpredictable that some of the settlements talked of turning to beasts of burden. “Take her farther up!” ordered Lugard. I shook my head. “No. If she parts at this height, we have a chance of getting out in one piece. I won’t chance more.” He glanced first at me and then at the hopper, as if he really saw it for the first time. His eyes narrowed. “This is a wreck—” “It is about the best you can find nowadays,” I replied promptly. “Machines don’t repair themselves. The techneer-robos are all on duty at the labs. We have had no off-world supplies since Commander Tasmond lifted with the last of the garrison. Most of these hoppers are just pasted together, with hope the main ingredient of that paste.” Again I met his searching stare. “That bad, is it?” he asked quietly. “Well, it depends upon what you term bad. The Committee has about decided it is a good thing on the whole. They like it that off-world authority has stopped giving orders. The Free Trade party is looking forward to independence and is

trying to beam in a trader. Meanwhile, repairs go first for lab needs; the rest of it slides. But no one, at least no one with a voice in Committee affairs, wants off-world control back.” “Who is in charge?” “The Committee—section heads—Corson, Ahren, Alsay, Vlasts—” “Corson, Ahren, yes. Who is Alsay?” “He’s at Yetholme.” “And Watsill?” “Drafted off-world. So was Praz—and Borntol. Most of the younger men went. And some of the big brains—” “Corfu?” “He—well, he killed himself.” “What?” He was clearly startled. “I had a message—” Then he shook his head. “It was a long time reaching me—out there. Why?” “The official verdict was minor fatigue.” “And behind that verdict?” “Rumor has it that he discovered something deadly. They wanted him to develop it. He wouldn’t. They pressured him, and he was afraid he might give in. So he made sure he would not. The Committee like that rumor. They have made it their talking point against off-world control. They say that they will never put weapons into anyone’s hands again.” “They won’t have the chance—into former hands, that is,” Lugard replied dryly. “And they had better give up their dreams of trade, too. The breakup is here and now, boy. Each world will have to make the most of its own resources and be glad if someone else doesn’t try to take them over—” “But the war is over!” Lugard shook his head. “The formal war, yes. But it tore the Confederation to bits. Law and order—we won’t see those come again in our time, not out there—” He motioned with one thin hand to the sky over us. “No, not in our time, nor probably for generations to come. The lucky worlds with rich natural resources will struggle along for a generation or two, trying hard to keep a grip on civilization. Others will coast downhill fast. And there will be wolves tearing all around—” “Wolves?” “An old term for aggressors. I believe it was an animal running in packs to pull down prey. The ferocity of such hunts lingered on in our race memories. Yes, there will be wolf packs out now.” “From the Four Stars?” “No,” he answered. “They are as badly mauled as we. But there are the remnants of broken fleets, ships whose home worlds were blasted, with no ports in which they will be welcomed. These can easily turn rogue, carrying on a way of life they have known for years, merely changing their name from commando

to pirate. The known rich worlds will be struck first—and places where they can set up bases—” I thought I knew then why he had returned. “You’re bringing in a garrison so Beltane won’t be open—” “I wish I were, Vere, I wish I were!” And the sincerity in his husky voice impressed me. “No, I’ve taken government property for my back pay, to the relief of the paymaster. I have title to Butte Hold and whatever it may contain, that is all. As to why I came back—well, I was born here, and I have a desire that my bones rest in Beltane earth. Now, south here—” The traces of the old road were nearly hidden. There had been a washout or two, over which the quickly growing guerl vines had already laid a mat. Now we were coming to the lava country, where there were signs of the old flows. The vegetation rooting here was that fitted to wastelands. This was midsummer, and the flowering period was nearly over. But here and there a late blossom still hung, a small flag of color. There were ripening yellow globes on the vines, and twice spoohens fluttered away, at the approach of the hopper, from where they had been feeding. We circled about an escarpment and saw before us Butte Hold. It was a major feat of adaptation, the rock of the mountain carved away and hollowed to make a sentry post. It had been fashioned right after First Ship landing, when there was still doubt about the native fauna, meant to be a protection against what lay in the saw-toothed wilds of the lava country. Though the need for such a fort was soon known to be unnecessary, it had served as a headquarters for all the outland patrols as long as they kept watch here. I set down on the landing strip by the main entrance. But the doors were banked with drifting sand and looked as if they had been welded so. Lugard got out, moving stiffly. He reached for his bag, but I already had it, sliding out in his wake. By the looks of it, he was traveling light, and if there were no supplies within—well, he might change his mind and want to return, if only temporarily, to guest in the section. He did not deny my company but went on ahead, once more in his hand that metal plate he had shown me at the port. As he came to the sand-billowed doorway, he stood a long moment, looking at the face of the stronghold, almost as if he expected one of those now shuttered windows to open and himself to be hailed from within. Then he stooped a little, peering closely at the door. With one hand he brushed its surface and with the other fitted the plate he carried over the locking mechanism. I half expected to see him disappointed, my belief in the durability and dependability of machinery having been systematically undermined by the breakdowns of years just past. But in this case I was wrong. There was a moment or two of waiting, to be sure, but then the seemingly solid surface parted into two leaves, rolling silently back on either side. At the same time, interior lights glowed, and we looked down a straight hall with closed doors to right and left. “You ought to be sure of supplies,” I ventured. He had turned to reach for the bag I still held. Now he smiled. “Very well. Assure yourself, come in—” I accepted that invitation, though I guessed he would rather be alone. Only I knew Beltane now as he did not. I would have to leave in the hopper, and he would be, could be, disastrously on his own—marooned here. He led the way straight down the hall to a door at the rear, raising his hand to pass it in a swift, decisive gesture over the plate set into its surface. That triggered the opening, and we stood on the edge of a grav shaft. Lugard did take precautions there, tossing his kit bag out. It floated gently, descending very slowly. Seeing that, he calmly followed it. I had to force myself after him, my suspicions of old installations being very near the surface. We descended two levels, and I sweated out that trip, only too sure that at any minute the cushioning would fail, to dash us on the floor below. But our

boots met the surface with hardly a hint of a jar, and we were in the underground storeroom of the hold. I saw in the subdued glow shrouded machines. Perhaps I had been wrong to think Lugard would miss transportation when I left. But he was turning to the right and some alcoved spaces, where there were containers and cases. “You see—I am well provided for.” He nodded at that respectable array. I looked around. There were weapon racks to the left, but they had been stripped bare. Lugard had gone past me to pull the covering off one of the machines. The plastic folds fell away from a digger, its pointed pick nose depressed to rest tip against the surface under us. My first hopes of a command flitter, or something like it, faded. Perhaps, just as the weapon racks had been stripped, so had such transports been taken. Lugard turned away from the digger, and there was a new briskness about him. “Have no doubts, Vere. I am well situated here.” His tone was enough to send me to the grav, and this time he signaled reverse, so we rose to the entrance hall. I was on my way to the door when he stopped me. “Vere—?” “Yes?” I turned. He was looking at me as if he were hesitant to say what was in his mind, and I had the impression that he fought to break through some inner reserve. “If you find your way up here again, look in.” It could not be termed a warm invitation; yet, coming from him, I knew that it was as cordial a one as I would ever have, and it was honestly and deeply meant. “I will that,” I promised. He stood in the doorway, a light sundown wind stirring up the drifted sand, driving some of it over the threshold to grit in the bare hallway, to watch me go. I deliberately circled once as I left and waved, to see his hand raised shoulder high in return. Then I headed to Kynvet, leaving the last of Beltane’s soldiers in his chosen retreat. Somehow I disliked thinking of him alone in that place, which must be for him haunted by all the men who had once trod its corridors and would never now return. But that it was a choice no one could argue against, I knew, Griss Lugard being who and what he was. When I put the hopper down at Kynvet, I saw the wink of lights through the summer dusk. “Vere?” Gytha’s voice called from the house. “Annet says hurry. There is company—” Company? Yes, there was the other hopper with the Yetholme code on its tail, and beyond it the flitter Haychax kept in flying order—almost as if we were entertaining half the Committee. But—why? I quickened pace and for a space forgot about Butte Hold and its new commander.

II IT MIGHT NOT be a full meeting of the Committee gathered under Ahren’s roof that night, but the men whose voices murmured behind closed doors were those who would dominate any such meeting. I had expected to have to answer for the presence of the hopper and was prepared to stand up for Lugard’s rights, only to discover that had I presumed to take a flitter, it would not have been noted then. Annet, busy at dishing up before summoning the men now entrenched in her father’s study, informed me of the reason for such an unusual convocation. The ship that had brought in Lugard and the other veterans had, in addition, a second mission. The captain had been contacted, as he came out of hyper into orbit, by a ship now above Beltane, of whose presence we had not been aware. And a plea had been delivered to the Committee. It was as Lugard had predicted, though his view of the matter had been gloomy. There were ships now without home ports, their native worlds burn-out cinders or radioactive to the point that life could not exist on their deadly surfaces. One such load of refugees now wove a pattern in our sky and asked for landing rights and settlement space. Beltane had, by the very reason for its settlement, been a “closed” world, its single port open only to certified ships. But that enclosure vanished with the end of the war. The truth was that the sector settlements occupied so little of the continental masses that we were not even a true pioneer world, in spite of the permanence of the hamlets that radiated from the port. The whole eastern land mass was empty of any colonization at all. Did the old restrictions still prevail? And if they did not—was the welcome signal out for any flotsam of the war? I thought of Lugard’s dire prophecy that wolves ranged or would range the star lanes—that those without defenses could be looted, or even taken over. And would these men now conferring with Ahren think of that possibility? I believed not. I picked up a platter of dunk bread and took it to the long table. Servo-robos were long gone now, save for a few in the labs. We had returned to the early state of our species and used our two hands, our feet, and the strength of our backs to work. Annet was a good cook—I relished what came out of her pots and pans more than the food at the port, which was still running by robo. The appetizing odor of the dunk bread made me realize it had been a long time since noon and that my port meal had been even less satisfactory than usual. When I returned for a tray of dunk bowls, she was looking out of the window. “Where did you get the hopper?” “Portside. I had a passenger into the outback.” She looked at me in surprise. “Outback! But who—?” “Griss Lugard. He wanted to go to Butte Hold. Came in on the tramp.” “Griss Lugard—who is he?”

“He served with my father. Used to command at Butte Hold before the war.” “Before the war” was even more remote to her than to me. She had hardly been out of a sector crèche when the first news of the conflict had come to us. And I doubted if she could remember the time before. “What did he come for? He is—was—a soldier, wasn’t he?” Soldiers, men who made fighting their profession, were as legendary on Beltane now as any of the fantastical creatures on the story tapes of the young. “He was born here. He was given the hold—” “You mean there are going to be soldiers here again? But the war is over. Father—the Committee—they will protest that! You know the First Law—” I knew the First Law—how could I escape it? It had been dinned into my ears, and supposedly my head, long enough. “War is waste; there is no conflict that cannot be resolved by men of patience, intelligence, and good will meeting openly in communication.” “No, he’s alone. He is no longer with the forces. He’s been badly wounded.” “He must be wit-addled too”—she began ladling the stew into the waiting tureen—“if he plans to live out in that wasteland.” “Who’s going to live in the wasteland?” Gytha bobbed up, a collection of bowl spoons in her suntanned hands. “A man named Griss Lugard.” “Griss Lugard—oh, Second-Commandant Lugard.” She surprised me as she was so often able to do to all of us. Her mouth curved in a smile at our astonishment, and her two side braids of hair swung as she nodded vigorously. “I can read, can’t I? Don’t I? Well, I read more than story tapes. I read history—Beltane history. It’s all in the old news tapes. And there’s more, too. All about how Second-Commandant Griss Lugard brought artifacts from the lava caves—that he found Forerunner things there. They were going to send someone here from Prime Center to see—then the war came. And nobody ever came. I read a lot of tapes to find out if they did. I bet he’s come back to look for treasure—Forerunner treasure! Vere, couldn’t we go out and help him look?” “Forerunner artifacts?” If Gytha said she had read it in the news tapes, it had been there. In such matters she made no mistakes. But I had never heard of any Forerunner remains on Beltane. When our kind had first broken out of the solar system that had nourished our species, we soon learned that we were not unique in our discovery of the worlds of far space. We met others already free of the lanes between system and system. And, as the galaxy counted time, they, too, were newcomers, though they were centuries in advance of our own first timid star steps. Yet there were those who had gone before them, and others before and before—until one could not count the empires that had risen and fallen or know how many generations of creatures, many much longer lived than we, had passed since some of those Forerunner ships had planeted on long-forgotten worlds. There had once been a brisk market in Forerunner finds, especially in the core planets of the inner systems where VIP’s had wealth and wanted curiosities to spend it on. Museums bought, too, though the story was that a better deal could be made with a private collector. If the tape Gytha quoted had the truth, then I could understand Lugard’s return to the Butte. Having been granted it, he would have legal title to any find thereabouts. But that such a luxury trade would be of use to him now—No, if conditions were as bad as his pessimistic account made them, one could tumble into a whole Forerunner warehouse and get no good of it. However, there is always a pull to the thought of treasure, and I cannot deny that

Gytha’s reaction was mine—to go looking for such. The thought made one’s blood run a little faster. The lava caves were no place for the prudent to venture unless a man knew something of the territory and went well equipped for all emergencies. They are not formed like usual caves by the action of water, but rather are born of fire. A tongue of lava flows down a slope and congeals on the outer surface, but the interior remains molten and continues to move, forming a passage. After ages, the roof of such a tube may collapse, opening it to the outer world. These long corridor caves can run for miles. The landscape around them is ridged with trenches where some cave ceilings have entirely collapsed, and in places natural bridges of rock span them. There are craters, broken volcanic cones, hazards that close the country to the casual traveler. “Could we, Vere? Perhaps the Rovers could go?” Gytha clattered her spoons against each other in rising excitement. “Certainly not!” Annet whirled around from the cook unit, a ladle dripping in her hand. “That is dangerous country; you know that, Gytha!” “Not alone,” Gytha returned, none of her excitement in the least dampened. “Vere would go and you maybe. We’d abide by the rules, no straying. And I never saw a lava cave—” “Annet,” Ahren called from the other room, “we’re in a hurry, daughter.” “Yes, coming—” She went back to filling the tureen. “Take the spoons in, Gytha. And, if you please, Vere, the preserve crocks.” Her mother had not come in. This was not unusual, since experiments in the lab did not wait on meal hours, and Annet was long resigned to sending over a tray or keeping back a portion of a dish. Consequently, she most always gave us food that could be reheated or set out successfully for a second or even a third time. The visitors and their host were already seated at the head of the table, and we took the hint to sit at the foot, not to interrupt. Not being truly one of their number, I usually found the conversation at such gatherings of little interest. But tonight might be different. However, if I had hoped to hear more of the refugee ship, I was disappointed. Corson ate mechanically, as one whose mind was entirely elsewhere. Ahren was as taciturn. Only Alik Alsay paid Annet compliments concerning the food and finally turned to me. “Good report you turned in, Collis, about the north slope.” Had he been Corson, I would have been pleased, even flattered a little. But I knew very well that my report was of small interest to Alsay, that he was merely making conversation. I murmured thanks, and that would have been that had not Gytha taken a hand for motives of her own. When she chose to fasten onto some project, as I might well have remembered, she generally, sooner or later, got her way. “Vere was out to the lava beds today. Have you been there, First-Tech Alsay?” “Lava beds.” He paused in raising his cup of caff in open surprise. “But why? There is no authorized mapping in that direction—simply wasteland. What took you there, Collis?” “I took someone—Sector-Captain Lugard. He is at Butte Hold,” ”Lugard?” Ahren came out of his preoccupation. “Griss Lugard? What is he doing on Beltane?” “I don’t know. He says he was given Butte Hold—”

“Another garrison!” Ahren set down his cup with a clatter that slopped a little of the caff over on his fingers. “We will not have that nonsense here again! The war is over. There is no need for any Security force!” The way he said “security” made it sound like an oath. “There is certainly no danger here, and we will not have any of those controls foisted on us again. The sooner they learn that, the better.” He glanced from Alsay to Corson. “This puts another light on the whole matter.” But what matter he did not explain. Instead, he demanded of me a full accounting of what I had learned from Lugard, and when I had given that, Alsay cut in. “It would seem Lugard has the hold as a pension.” “Which could be only a cover-up he used with the boy.” Ahren was still aroused. “But his port papers—they ought to tell us something. And”—once more he turned his attention to me—“you might well keep an eye on him, Vere. Since he accepted your help in getting there, he could well understand your dropping in again—” What he was suggesting I did not like, but I would not say that yet, not before these others and across the table where I ate by his leave, under the roof he had made mine. Something in Lugard’s return seemed to have flicked Ahren on the raw; otherwise, he would not have gone to the length of hinting I should spy on a man who had been my father’s good friend. “Father”—once more Gytha cut in, still intent on her own wishes—“can’t Vere take us with him? The Rovers have never been to the lava lands.” I expected Ahren to quell her with one of those single glances he used with effect. But he did not, and when he made no quick answer, Alsay spoke. “Ah, the Rovers. And what has been their latest adventure, my dear?” He was one of those adults who were never at ease with children, and his voice took on a stilted note, used earlier to a lesser extent with me. Gytha could be polite when the occasion, by her measurement, warranted it. She smiled at the Yetholme leader, and she could smile winningly when she chose. “We went to the gullat lizard hatchery and made a recording of peep cries,” she replied. “It was for Dr. Drax’s communication experiment.” I applauded her cunning. To remind her father at this point of some volunteered aid in the past was a bolster for her present demand to widen horizons. “Yes,” Ahren agreed. “It really was an outstanding piece of work, Alsay, showing great patience and perseverance. So now you would like to see the lava beds—” I was startled. Could he actually agree? Across the table I saw Annet stiffen; her lips moved as if they were already shaping a protest. But Alsay spoke again and this time to me. “Quite a useful organization, Collis. You are supplementing the teaching tapes very well. It is a pity we have not been able to advance to off-world study. But now that the war is over, there will be opportunities for that.” Did he really believe so, I wondered. The Rovers were more Gytha’s idea than mine, though she had drawn me into it and locked me to her purposes so well that I could not now have dropped the project even if I wanted to. When the settlers had come to Beltane, they had intended to train their children into a science-minded caste. In fact, experiments in such education had been part of the original plan. However, the war had interfered with this as with so much else. Off-world science during those years might have made some great strides. We suspected as much. But our knowledge had become so specialized and narrowed that, lacking fresh imports of taped information, we generally still went over ground ten years old by planet dating, perhaps a hundred by advances elsewhere. To counteract this stultifying effect had been one of the tasks of the educators. However, the cream of them had been drafted for service. Those remaining—like the sector people—tended to be conservative, the older ones. Then there was a drastic epidemic in the third year of the war (caused said rumor—we always had rumor—by over-zealous experimentation for the Services that resulted in a battle between the sector chiefs and the commandant and the closing down of two projects). After that there were even fewer left to be concerned with the training of the next generation. By spasms parents came out of their labs and studies long enough to be excited for a moment over the lack of concentrated cramming for their

children. Then some sudden twist in their own work, some need for complete concentration, took their minds off the matter. There were never many children—at Kynvet now only eight, ranging from the seven-year-old twins Dagny and Dinan Norkot to Thad Maky, who was fourteen and considered himself—irritatingly at times—nearly adult. Gytha early dominated. She had a vivid imagination and a total recall memory. Her use of every tape she could lay hand on, though she was barred from digging into lab recordings, had given her a wide range of the most miscellaneous and amazing information. But she differentiated clearly between fact and fiction, and she could spin a fantasy or answer a factual question in the space of a couple of breaths. To the younger children, she was a fountain of wisdom. They appealed to her general knowledge before they approached any adult, for the abstraction of their parents had become so much of a habit by now that this community was really split into two, marked by the difference in ages. Having organized her followers, Gytha had worked upon me. And I found, whether I willed it or no, I was leading expeditions of the Rovers sometimes more than I was trying to further my own Ranger studies. At first I had rebelled at assuming such responsibilities, but Gytha’s discipline held so well, her threat to any one of them of being left out was direful, that they did obey orders. And it came to be a source of pride to me that I was in part a teacher for those eager to learn. Annet was not quite one of us. She always distrusted Gytha’s enthusiasms and thought her sister very prone to reckless disregard for danger. But she did not give vocal vent to any worries when I was in command, for she knew I would not willingly lead them into trouble. Now and then she did join one of our expeditions, her role usually being that of managing the commissary. And, I will say this in her favor—she never made any complaint when on the march. But to take the Rovers into the lava lands—no, that was where I joined with Annet and was ready to hold firmly to the negative. But Ahren leaned forward a little to question his younger daughter. “You have a project in mind?” He at least knew how to talk to the younger generation, using the same tone of interest with which he would have greeted a remark from one of his colleagues. “Not yet.” Gytha was always honest. She never tried to conceal facts. “Only, we’ve been to the swamps, and up in the hills several times, and never there. It is to broaden horizons—” She fell back on her own general term for exploration. “We would like to see Butte Hold.” I noted that she said nothing of a hunt for Forerunner treasure. “Broaden horizons, eh? What about it, Vere? You were in there today with a hopper. How was the terrain?” I could not hedge, though I wanted to. He need only check the reading on the machine dial to know the truth, though I did not know why Imbert Ahren would do such a thing. Only, I did know him well enough to recognize a state of mind-made-up. He wanted us to go to the lava lands—or at least to Butte Hold. And the reason for that took little guessing—he wanted a report on Lugard. Perhaps he thought if he could not get it readily from me, he could from Gytha. Children’s eyes are sharp, and they see much. “Well enough around the Butte. I would not venture farther without a good survey.” “Gytha”—Ahren turned to her—“would a trip to Butte Hold enlarge horizons enough for the present?” “Yes! When—tomorrow?” She demanded almost in one breath. “Tomorrow? Well—yes, tomorrow might be very good. And, Annet”—he spoke to the older girl—“we shall be at the port. Your mother will accompany us. I think that the Norkots and the Wymarks will be going, too, for a general meeting. Why don’t you make this a full-day outing? Take food for a—do you not say—cookout?” Again I was sure

she would protest. But in face of the firmness underlying that suggestion, she did not. Gytha gave an exclamation of delight. I thought she was already mentally listing supplies needed to uncover Forerunner treasure. “Give my greetings to the Sector-Captain,” Ahren said to me. “Say that we shall be very glad to see him at the port. We may be able to profit by his experience.” That I doubted. Ahren’s opinion of the military had been stated so many times, forcibly for the most part, that I could not conceive of his listening to Griss Lugard on any subject without impatience and a closed mind. Ahren was so eager to speed us on our way that he gave me permission to use the supply hopper, which I knew to be in repair and which would hold our whole company. Once supper was done, Gytha was off at light speed to warn her crew of the next day’s promise. I helped Annet clear the table and saw her frown as she fed the dishes into the one kitchen mecho that still ran—the infra cleaner. “Father wants to know about Griss Lugard,” she said abruptly. “He doesn’t trust him.” “He need only go out and meet the man, and he’d know the truth.” I was unhappy about the way we were being used. “Lugard is certainly not planning to take over Beltane! He probably only wants to be left alone—and I don’t think he will welcome us too much.” “Because he does have something to hide?” she flashed. “Because he must want peace and quiet.” “A soldier?” “Even they can grow tired of war.” I had skirted her prejudices before. They were rooted in what she had been taught all her life. My situation as more guest than family had made me talk and walk with circumspection ever since I had been sorrowfully and firmly put through a discussion session for defending my absent father’s beliefs with my fists when I was all of ten. “Perhaps.” But she was not convinced. “Do you really think there is something in the Forerunner artifact story? That seems unlikely. There were never any traces of anything found on the surface.” “Not that we have searched very thoroughly,” I countered, not because I did believe in any treasure, but to keep the record correct. It was true that we had aerial surveys of much of the western continent, plus the reports of all the early exploring parties, but although those made a network of the known across much of the land, it was a loose one, with perhaps something to be learned about what lay in the gaps between. The land was wide and empty. Perhaps those of the refugee ship, were they permitted to settle, could even find a good place to the north, south, or father west, without changing much the course of our pattern. We prepared for an early takeoff in the morning, but we were still behind those who left for the port. I gathered that they were assembling not only the full Committee, but also as many of the others as they could to hear the petition of the orbiting ship. But for the children, this subject took second place. The lava country had been so talked up by Gytha that I feared there might be some disappointment later. So I sat in the pilot’s seat, half facing around as we readied to go, and made it most plain to my passengers that our destination was Butte Hold and not the rough country behind it, which we had no intention of entering. Also, they were not to fasten on Lugard or enter the hold unless at his invitation, which secretly I thought would not be uttered. Were he wise and caught sight of us on any view screen

when we landed, he would leave us to wander outside his wall. Privately, I had also made it clear to Gytha that if Lugard did appear and be hospitable, she was not to mention Forerunners, treasure, or anything of the sort. I was answered by her scorn. As if she did not know how to act! I was, she commented, getting to be as narrow-minded as Annet. And if that was what came of growing up, she would try to get some sort of retarding pills from one of the labs and be herself for years yet. She liked to be the way she was, and she didn’t try to make people over either! The flight-hop from Kynvet was shorter than that from the port. In the old days, Kynvet had been the first link in the chain tying the Butte to the other settlements. In less than an hour, we touched down on the blowing sand of the old landing. I fully expected to see the Butte firmly closed, but its door stood open to the morning sun and there was Lugard, entirely as if he had invited and expected us. Obeying orders, the Rovers hung back as I went to explain our presence, but I heard some muffled exclamations. The veteran was not alone. On one of his thin shoulders perched a herwin, as if it had known him since its hatching. And by his boots crouched a rock hanay, while between his fingers he held a slender dark red rod. He did not speak or hail us, but rather he raised the rod to his lips. Then he began to pipe—and at that trickle of clear notes falling in a trill as might spring rain, the herwin whistled its morning call and the hanay rocked back and forth on its clawed digging paws, as if the music sent it into a clumsy dance. I do not know how long we stood there, listening to music that was like none I had ever heard before, but which drew us. Then Lugard set aside the pipe, and he was smiling. “Magic,” he said softly, “Drufin magic.”, He gave one last note, and the herwin took wing, sailing straightway up into the sky, while the hanay seemed to see us for the first time, gave a startled grunt, and waddled into hiding among the rocks. “Welcome.” Lugard still smiled. “I am Griss and you are—?” The children, as if released from a spell, ran to him, and each called his name as if he wished to claim instant recognition from this worker of magic. He gave them greeting and then suggested that they explore the Butte, making them welcome to any room with an open door. When they had gone into the corridor behind him, he looked at me, at Annet, and back to me, and his face was darkly sober. ”The refugee ship”—his question was a command for an answer—“what have they decided to do concerning that?” “We don’t know. They have a meeting at the port today.” He limped on into the sun. “Lend me your hopper.” Again it was more order than asking. “They can’t be so stupid as to let them land—” I stood aside without a question, so compelling was the force of his preoccupation. It was clear he harbored some thought to the extinction of all else. He was in the cabin, raised from the ground, when Annet cried out, “Vere! He’s going off with all our food—leaving us here! When will he be back? Stop him!” Since this was now a complete impossibility, I caught her arm and pulled her out of the miniature dust storm raised in his takeoff, urging her to the Butte. She turned on me then with demands to know why I had let him go. And to tell the truth, I had no real answer for her. But I did manage to make her understand that Lugard’s supplies could certainly be used by us under the circumstances, and it might be well to see what the Rovers were doing inside.

III “IT ISN’T REAL MAGIC!” We heard Gytha’s voice raised from one of the rooms. “Don’t you ever read tapes, Pritha? The vibrations, the sounds—they attract the animals and birds. I don’t know what Drufin means—it’s probably off-world. But it’s the sound—and maybe a special kind of pipe to make it.” As usual she was quick to distinguish the real from the unreal. One of the thoughts I sometimes have crossed my mind then—what is real and unreal? Unreal to one people or species can be real to another. Beltane libraries are sadly lacking in information about other worlds—unless it deals with scientific matters. But I had heard stories from spacemen, and perhaps not all of those were tall tales told to astonish the planet bound. Drufin magic meant nothing to me either, but doubtless Gytha’s explanation was right. But there were other things beside piping to start the thought of magic growing— “With a pipe such as that,” Thad broke in, “you could go hunting and never come home with an empty bag. Just pipe ’em up and stun ’em.” “No!” Gytha was as quick to counter such speculation as she had been to deny the supernatural. “That is a trap and—” I moved on into the room. Gytha, her cheeks flushed, faced Thad, indignation expressed in every line of her thin body. Behind her the younger children had drawn together as if to form a support. And Thad had only Ifors Juhlan on his side. It was a clash that had occurred before, and I expected it at intervals. Perhaps someday such a difference of opinions would break Thad loose from the Rovers. He wanted action and more excitement than we could promise him. ”Second Law, Thad,” I said now, though that sealed me away into the adult world. But the admonition was strong enough to keep his rebellion bottled. Second Law—”As we value life and well-being, so does lesser life. We shall not take life without thought or only to satisfy the ancient curse of our species, which is unheeding violence.” There was no need to hunt on Beltane—save for specimens for the labs. And then sure care must be taken of them so that they eventually might be returned unharmed to the Reserves. These were scattered widely, each with its population to be studied. The prizes were the mutants of the over-mountain Reserves. Their intelligence had been raised, and a certain number of such animals had even gone to war, in “beast teams,” aligned with human controllers. I hoped to qualify for work on such a Reserve. Since the breakdown of the educational chain, I thought I could persuade the powers in control that practical knowledge of the field type was as useful now as the stated requirements of off-world learning, which might never be in existence again.

I had gone a-hunting with a stunner, and I had shown visa-tapes of this to the Rovers. Perhaps that had been a mistake. Thad—well, we were a non-violent world, with action mainly confined to cerebration and experimentation within four walls. There had been a case or two during the past few years of killing and pillage without cause. The perpetrators had been sent to the psyche lab at the port and the stories hushed up. But—perhaps not only machines broke under the circumstances that had gripped Beltane for the last decade. I had been thinking of the stalemate in education. If one did not go forward, one did not just remain still; one slipped back. Were we slipping back? We were still conditioned by the laws, intended to keep us at peace with each other and the life about us. But— “Vere—” Thad changed the subject now, either because he wanted to escape Gytha’s accusation or because he was really interested. “What is all this?” He gestured to indicate the four walls of the room. Time had set lightly here. I believed the Butte must have been sealed airtight. The walls were as bright under the diffused light as if they were newly painted. Three were unbroken; the fourth, with the door, was separated by that into two tall panels. And what they all displayed were maps, each covering a quarter of our continent, north, east, south, and west. All the settlements were marked with small bulbs, unlit. In addition, I picked out some of the long abandoned Security holds, most of them mere sentry posts. Below each wall was a board with a range of levers and buttons, and in front of each board a chair that slid with ease along the full length of the controls. The center of the room was occupied by a square platform a step above the surface of the floor, and on it was a fifth chair, made to face any wall, as Dinan Norkot had discovered, sitting in it to whirl dizzily about. Memories of the past when I was about Dinan’s age stirred. I had been here once and had seen my father in that center seat—not whirling but turning slowly to watch lights winking on the board. Blue—yes, blue for the sectors, red for the Security posts, and yellow—no, green—for the Reserves. “This is a com post,” I told Thad. Not a com post either, but the com post—more important even than the one at the port. Butte Hold had been the most secure of all the posts, and so the most necessary installations were here. Did it still work, I wondered? The lights were out, but that might only mean that the boards were closed down, not really dead. I went to the one facing north. The port light—I leaned over the board, discovered that that was too uncomfortable, so seated myself in the chair, and compared numbers on board and wall until I found the button to press. Voices boomed into the room so that I heard Annet cry out, and we all stared at the wall map from which they seemed to break with a clarity that would have been more natural had the men speaking stood before us. Dagny Norkot ran over to stand beside my chair. “That’s my father.” she declared. “But he went to the port—” “—satisfied with their statements. Then—” It faded as if Norkot had walked away from an open com mike or else that the power installation weakened. Annet was beside me now. “We’re not supposed to be listening in on a Committee meeting,” she said. That was the truth. But somehow I wanted to know just how effective the whole system still was. I snapped up the port lever and depressed that of Yetholme. Again we had a pickup. Not clear voices as Norkot’s had been, but enough to know that the old setup was partially effective. “You know”—Thad pushed between Annet and my chair—“this Griss Lugard, he can about hear all that is going on—everywhere—and stay right here! Voice pickup anyway. Isn’t there any visa-screen relay?”

Again I remembered. Getting out of the seat before the north board, I went to that center control chair where Dinan had been spinning moments earlier. It took me two false starts before I either remembered, and was not aware of it, or lit by chance on the proper combination of two buttons in the chair arms, plus a foot lever. A section of the wall slid up to disclose a screen. “Yah!” Thad expressed his excited interest. “Now what do you do?” I glanced quickly over the rest of the map, having no mind to look at any occupied sector house. The easiest choice would be one of the abandoned Security ports in the far north. “Thad, press the first lever, first row,” I ordered, holding the screen ready with my own fingers. He did so. There was a flicker on the screen and then a picture, so dim at first that I thought the power was nearly exhausted. But as I continued to hold, it built up into a brighter display, and we were looking at another room. This, too, had banks of controls, a couple of chairs. But there was a great crack in the wall behind the control board and— “Look—a wart-horn!” For a moment it was startling. Crouched in the chair, which was still on an even keel, was indeed a wart-horn. Its warty skin, its froglike head and face with the forward pointing horns, made it anything but a pleasant-looking object. But the way it crouched in the chair, its webbed forepaws even resting on the arms as it seemed to lever itself up to meet our gaze, always supposing that our actions here had activated the appearance of a twin screen for reception there and two-way viewing, gave it a disturbing air of intelligence, as if it had been about some secret business of its own in our alien structure and had been surprised. We watched its throat swell and heard, muted but still recognizable, its harsh croaking grunt. It leaned up and out even farther, its face filling the screen, and I heard Pritha cry out, “No! No!” I released the com buttons, and the screen not only went dark but also the wall moved to cover it again. “I don’t like it! It looked at us!” Pritha’s voice became a wail. I swung around in the chair, but Annet had already taken her in her arms. “You know wart-horns,” she said soothingly. “They are nothing to be afraid of. And if that one saw us, he probably was just as startled as you were. That”—she turned to me—“was an old sentry post, wasn’t it, Vere?” At my nod, she continued. “And it’s been left empty for years. I bet the wart-horn may have a den there.” “It looked at us,” Pritha repeated. “And we looked at it,” Annet answered. “So we’re even. And that place where it is is a long way from here!” “Two days by hopper, Pritha,” I cut in. “Nobody goes there any more.” “Vere”—Gytha was beside Thad, her hand poised above the levers and buttons—“let’s try another one—maybe this?” “No!” Annet snapped before I had a chance to answer. “There’s been enough of this listening and peeping. And since Sector-Captain Lugard made off with our lunch, suppose we try to find out what is in the cupboards here. As you said, Vere, he owes us that” “Indeed he does.” I backed her up. But I

lingered to make sure I was the last to leave the room, Gytha and Thad going reluctantly, gazing back at the tempting display of possible peeps hither and thither across our world. “Vere?” A small hand slipped into mine. I looked down into Pritha’s almost triangular face. The families that had been brought in to settle Beltane had not been homogeneous in the beginning but came from widely separated worlds, since it had been their special talents and training that selected them. So we did indeed represent types of many kinds, some of which had mutated physically from the ancient norm of our species. Pritha Wymark, within one month of Gytha’s age, was hardly taller than Dagny, five years younger. Her delicate bones and slender body, though, were not those of a small child. She had a quick mind, but she was timid, highly sensitive to things that perhaps the others were never aware of or felt only lightly. Now there was a shadow on her ethereal face. “Vere,” she repeated, and her voice was hardly above a whisper. “That wart-horn—it—it was watching us!” “Yes?” I encouraged, for behind that statement of fact something troubled her. Dimly I felt it also—that the way the thing had squatted in the chair before the screen, its stance aping that of a man minding the control board, had been disturbing. “It—it was not—” She hesitated as if she could not put her troubled thoughts into words. “Perhaps it was just the way it was hunched in the chair, Pritha. Wart-horns have never been submitted to the up-raying, you know. They are too low on the learn-scale. And that was a sentry post we picked up, way out in the wastelands. It was not on one of the Reserves.” “Perhaps—” But I knew she was not satisfied. “When we get back, Pritha”—I tried to reassure her—“I’ll report it. If by chance some wart-horn has been up-scaled and escaped, they will have a record of it. But one does not have to fear even an up-scaled animal—you know that.” “Yes, Vere. I guess it was just the way it sat there, looking at us.” But still she kept her hand in mine until we reached the last of the open doors and looked in upon a scene of activity as Annet examined labels on ration cans taken from a case recently opened and made choices to set out on the table that must once have served the whole garrison for mess. Lugard’s cooking arrangements were simple. He had attached two portable cooking units. And there was another case of mess kits clipped together, which Thad now unpacked with no small clatter. Against the far wall were the huge units that were dial food, but Lugard’s plates were enough for our purposes. Gytha handed the containers Annet selected to Ifors, who fitted them into the heating clips. It was all very brisk and efficient. “It would seem we are not going hungry,” I commented. Annet wore an excited expression as she turned to me. “Vere, real caff! Not just parx-seed substitute! And a lot of off-world things. Why, here are camman fowl slices and creamed fass leaves—things we haven’t seen for years!” “Lugard must have been using officers’ mess supplies.” I crossed to read the labels on some of the cans.

We ate well enough on Beltane—perhaps our common fare would have seemed luxury on some worlds, since the bio labs produced new strains adapted to growing here in great variety—but for a long time there had been no imports, and we had heard, if we had never had a chance to taste for ourselves, nostalgic mention now and then of some particular viand our elders remembered. Prudence finally controlled Annet’s selection, and she picked for our eating not the more exotic things she had found, but those that promised few if any upsetting reactions from stomachs unaccustomed to the unknown. We ate cautiously at first and then with our usual good appetites to be satisfied. When we had done, Annet lined up a small company of containers and looked at me wistfully. “Do you suppose he would trade?” she asked. “If I could have some of these for Twelfth Day feasting—” “No harm in asking. He ought to like some fresh dunk bread, or your partin-berry preserves, or even a freeze dinner out of the deep store. Canned rations, even if they are from off-world, must get tiresome after a while. “Now”—I spoke to the rest—“suppose we set this all to rights again.” Camp discipline held, though I knew they were impatient to go exploring. I had noted that the grav door was shut, and for that I was thankful. They would obey rules, I knew—no opening shut doors. I was deswitching the heating units when something made me count heads and find two missing, Thad and Ifors. I repeated their names. Annet turned to count, but Dinan had an answer for us. “They went out—after they packed the mess kits, Vere.” The com room? It would be just like Thad to experiment there, though I thought that the activation of the screens would be something even Thad could not do. But I started down the hall in swift strides, aware that Thad was becoming more the rebel—and I did not want the face-down to come between us here and now. “—Griss Lugard!” The volume was up, loud enough so that those words bellowed down the hall, echoing a little. I came into the room just as Thad’s hand shot out to the button he had pushed a moment earlier. But, though he was apparently exerting pressure on it, the old fittings were now jammed, and the sound continued to roar. “That is the situation, Gentle Homos.” It was Lugard’s voice now with a rasping, grating tone increased by the broadcast. “You cannot trust such treaties—” “Perhaps you cannot, Sector-Captain.” That was Scyld Drax. “The military mind is apt to foresee difficulties—” “The military mind!” Lugard’s interruption came clearly. “I thought I made it simple—the situation is as plain as the sun over you, man! You say you want peace, that you think the war is over. Maybe the war is, the kind we have been fighting, but you don’t have peace now—you have a vacuum out of which law, and what little protection any world can depend upon, has been drained. And into this is going to spread, just like one of your pet viruses, anarchy. A planet not prepared to defend itself is going to be a target for raiders. There were fleets wrecked out there, worlds destroyed. The survivors of those battles are men who have been living by creating death around them for almost half a generation, planet time. It has become their familiar way of life—kill or be killed, take or perish. They have no home bases to return to; their ships are now their homes. And they no longer have any central controls, no fears of the consequences if they take what they want from the weaker, from those who cannot or will not make the effort to stand them off. You let this ship land—only one ship, you say, poor lost people; give them living room as we have a sparsely settled world—there is one chance in a hundred you read them aright. “But there are ninety-nine other chances that you have thrown open the door to your own destruction. One ship, two, three—a home port, a safe den from which to go raiding. And I ask you this, Corson, Drax, Ahren, the rest of you. This was a government experimental station. What secrets did you develop here that could be ferreted out, to be used as weapons to arm the unscrupulous?” There was a moment of silence. He had asked that as a man might deliver a challenge.

Then we heard Corson. “We have nothing that would serve as such—not now. When the authorities forced certain of us to such experimentation, we refused—and when that authority left, we destroyed all that had been done.” “Everything?” Lugard asked. “Your tapes, your supplies, perhaps, but not your memories. And as long as a man’s memory remains, there are ways of using it.” There was a sharp sound, as if a palm had been slapped down hard on some surface. “There is no need to anticipate or suggest such violence, Sector-Captain Lugard. I—we must believe that your recent service has conditioned you to see always some dark design behind each action. There is not one reason to believe that these people are not what they have declared themselves to be, refugees seeking a new life. They have freely offered to let any one of us come aboard while they are still in off-orbit—to inspect their ship and make sure they come in peace. We would not turn a starving man from our doors; we cannot turn away these people and dare still to call ourselves a peaceful-minded community. I suggest we put it to the vote. Nor do I consider that you, Sector-Captain, are so much one of us as to have a vote.” “So be it—” That was Lugard once more, but he sounded very tired. “ ‘And when Yamar lifted up his voice, they did not listen. And when he cried aloud, they put their hands to their ears, laughing. And when he showed them the cloud upon the mountains, they said it was afar and would come not nigh. And when a sword glinted in the hills and he pointed to it, they said it was but the dancing of a brook in the sun.’ “ The Cry of Yamar! How long had it been since anyone had quoted that in my hearing? Why should anyone on Beltane? Yamar was a prophet of soldiers; his saga was one learned by recruits to point the difference between civilian and fighting man. There was another faint sound that might have been boot heels on a floor. Then a murmur and Ahren’s voice rising above that. “Now—if there are no further interruptions, shall we vote?” As if Thad had at last loosed the button, though he had ceased to struggle with it some time ago, there was silence in the com room. Thad pushed the button again, as determined now to have it open as he had been earlier to close the channel. But there was no response. “Vere?” Gytha stood a little behind me. “What was Griss Lugard talking about? Why didn’t he want the refugees to land?” “He was—is—afraid that they may want to turn pirate—or to raid here.” Without thinking of my listeners, I gave her the truth. “Which is simply stupid!” Annet said. “But we must not blame the Sector-Captain. He is a soldier, and he does not understand the kind of life we have here. He will learn. Thad, you should not have listened in on the Committee meeting—” He looked a little guilty. “I didn’t mean to—we were trying to see how many of the stations were still open. I hit that button by mistake, and it stuck there. Truly that is what happened.” “Now”—Annet glanced around the room as if she disliked what she saw—“I think we had better go. We had no right to come here—” “He said we could go in any room where the door was open,” Gytha promptly reminded her. “And this one was. Vere”—she spoke to me—“could we go up in the watch-tower and look at the lava lands, even if we can’t go out there?” To me that seemed a reasonable request, and when we found that the door to the upper reaches of the Butte was one of the open ones, we went. There was a short climb and for the last part a steep one. Annet chose to remain below with the Norkot twins and Pritha, who disliked heights. We came out on a windswept sentry go. I unslung my

distance lenses to turn them north and west. Here and there were splotches of green vegetation native to Beltane, not the lighter, cultivated mutant off-world growth that lay about the settlements. In some places it formed odd shadows that seemed almost black. But the stretches of bare lava ran and puddled out in vast rough pockets. There were other runnels of the stuff, and I had never seen a land so forbidding and forsaken. Even if it had any life hiding there, a man could search for a year and perhaps never uncover so much as a trail. “Yah—” Thad focused his own lenses. “Looks as if someone stuck a paddle down in seal-cor and turned it around a couple of times and then just let it cool. Where are the caves?” “Your guess is as good as mine,” I told him. When I visited the Butte in the old days, I had been too young to go exploring. I could not remember having seen this before, though I had probably been brought up to the lookout. “Vere, how old is it—the lava flows, I mean?” Gytha asked thoughtfully. “Read your geology tapes. I wouldn’t know that either.” I unslung my lenses and passed them to Ifors, who would hand them in turn to Sabian and Emrys. ”But old—very old—” she persisted. “Undoubtedly that.” “Then the lava caves might have been here a long time, too—as long as Forerunner times?” “Who knows when those were? And there were more than one lot of Forerunners.” I was evasive, trying to catch Gytha’s eye and warn her against the treasure-hunting story. But she had leaned both elbows on the parapet and was holding Thad’s lenses, giving a searching survey to the wild lands. “Forerunners?” Unfortunately Thad had heard. “Why worry about Forerunners? There weren’t any ruins here—” Before I could stop her, Gytha answered. “That’s all you know! Griss Lugard found Forerunner relics back in a lava cave before the war. If you’d read Beltane history tapes, you’d know a lot more, Thad Maky. There were men coming from off-world to explore—then the war broke out and nobody did any more about it.” “Is that so, Vere?” Thad demanded of me. “Forerunners—here! Is that why Griss Lugard really came back? My father said he was getting the Butte ready for a new garrison and the Committee wouldn’t let them in. They’d put the repel rays on at the port if they tried it. Lugard landed before they knew it, but they aren’t going to let any more of his kind in. But if he came back just on his own after Forerunner treasure—Maybe he’d let us help him—or the Committee could make him—” “Thad! Gytha read a rumor in an old news tape. That is all there is to it. We are not going to mention this to Griss Lugard or at home—understand? This is a hold—” I appealed to one of their own private rules. “Holds” were just that, information they kept to themselves, some even secret from me. And I had always respected their reticence. But this was important. Thad looked steadily back, but there were no reservations and no hint of mutiny in his answer. “Agreed.” He used their regular formula. Then I turned to Gytha. “Hold?” She nodded violently. “Hold!” And the others followed her. ”Vere.” Emrys had aimed the lenses east. “There is something coming—a hopper, I think. And it must be on top circle speed—it’s really shooting.” I took back the lenses and followed the pointing of his finger. Our hopper—with Lugard. Perhaps it would be better to make ourselves scarce as soon as we could, so I headed my crew down to the lower levels.

IV IF WE HAD expected to see in Griss Lugard some reaction to the dispute at the port, we were to be disappointed. Outwardly, he was one on a holiday now. He limped toward us as we waited by the door of the Butte, a smile on his face, though that was pulled slightly awry by the reconstruction flesh on his left cheek and jaw. “My pardon, Gentle Fem.” He spoke first to Annet, using the courtly off-world address and sketching with his free hand a half salute of courtesy. In the other one he carried the basket of food she had packed that morning. “It would seem that in my haste I carried off your nooning. I trust you found enough to make up for it—” “We did,” she returned tartly. But then she, too, smiled and added, “Better fare than was in that, Sector-Captain.” “No.” He corrected her. “Not Sector-Captain. I have retired—there is no one here to command, nor will there be. I am Griss Lugard, and I own Butte Hold. But I am no commandant of any new Security force. That will not be seen again on Beltane.” His tone, so light at first hail, was now serious, as if he uttered a warning rather than gave an explanation of his presence. Then his mood changed again, and his smile returned. “What think you of my hold?” The question was not asked alone of Annet but of all of us. “I am afraid that we made too free, though you did say that the open rooms were for exploration,” I spoke up. Best to have it clear that we had lighted on one of his possessions that he might not want to have common knowledge—the com system. “We activated the calls—” But he did not lose his smile. “Did you now? And they worked? How well?” Could it be true that he had not tried out the system for himself, that he had no curiosity about what could be a spy network across the sectors, did he want or need one? “It worked. We got a little of your meeting with the Committee.” Let him know the worst at once. If he then wanted to fire us out for meddling, well, we perhaps had that coming to us. “My eloquence, which did not move mountains of prejudgement, eh?” Again he did not seem disturbed but rather as if he had known all along about our eavesdropping, though I did not see how that could be possible. Unless—could he have wanted us to do just as we had done? Again—for what purpose? I guessed, however, that would be one question he did not want asked or answered. Then Pritha stood a step or two nearer to him and looked directly up into his repaired face. “We saw something too—”

“In the Committee room?” Still in that undisturbed voice. “No. Vere said it was in one of the old security posts. There was a wart-horn sitting in a chair—acting—acting as if it were a man!” “What!” For the first time his serenity was ruffled. “What do you mean?” “We got the visa-scceen working,” I explained. “Picked up Reef Rough post. The thing was crouched in a chair in the com room, looking straight at the screen. It was just a coincidence, but a rather startling one.” “It must have been,” he agreed. “But if the screen worked at its end, too, it must have been just as astounded, don’t you think, Pritha?” He had remembered her name out of the mass introduction of the morning. “I don’t believe we need fear an invasion of wart-horns—not wart-horns.” But refugees were different, I thought to myself. For all his surface unconcern, Griss Lugard was inwardly uncommitted to Beltane ways. For the rest of that day, though, one would not have believed so. Annet was won over as easily as the rest of the Rovers. I think even Gytha’s curiosity about the Forerunners was appeased by Lugard’s flow of talk. He spoke freely of setting up a new type of Reserve wherein he intended to study native wild life, applying certain techniques he had learned off-world. He would not be working with mutant animals but with norms. And the stories and projects he talked of were engrossing enough so that we could believe he intended just such a life as he outlined. He brought out his pipe once more, and the notes he drew from it, if they enchanted birds and beasts, could enthrall men also, for while he piped, we listened, and there was no idea of the passing of time until he put it aside with a laugh. “You pay my poor music high honor, friends. But night comes with lengthening shadows, and I believe questions will be asked if you continue to linger here—” “Vere!” Annet jumped to her feet. “It’s almost sunset! Why, we’ve been here hours! I am sorry, Griss Lugard.” She stumbled a little over saying his name. “We have imposed upon you far too long.” “But, Gentle Fem, it has not been any imposition. The Butte is lonely. A welcome for your guesting here, all of you, is ever ready. There will be no private latch upon this door.” He reached one hand to his right and touched the portal with his fingertips, as if so to impress upon us his invitation. “We can truly come again?” Gytha demanded. “When?” He laughed. “Whenever you like, Gytha. All and any—whenever you like.” We said our good-byes and thanks. But I wondered as I set the hopper toward Kynvet if we would ever return to the Butte. Lugard’s stand before the Committee would give them no good opinion of him, and Ahren and his colleagues would perhaps be now of the belief that close association with an ex-officer would corrupt their youth. To my surprise, however, there were no comments made on Lugard’s argument with the now rulers of Beltane. Some questions were asked concerning the day’s activities. I did not think it was deception not to mention our inadvertent eavesdropping. And for once the unity of the Rovers was an aid, since they seemed to have decided among themselves that this was to be a hold as far as the adults were concerned. They were free enough on all else, talking a lot of Lugard’s project on studying the wildlife of the waste. My own instinct was to question this, but he had already given it as the reason for wanting the Butte. “So he asked you to return,” Ahren commented when Gytha was done. “But you must not take advantage of his courtesy, daughter. He is here on a special grant—” “Special grant!” I could not suppress that exclamation. “Oh, yes. It is not at all what we suspicioned. He is, of course and unfortunately, apt to look at matters from the point of view of the Services, but he has severed all relationship with the forces. I gather his injuries made such severance mandatory. Now he is an accredited settler-ranger—with an archaeology grant into the bargain!”

“Forerunners!” Gytha cried with a triumphant glance at me. “I was right—” But her father shook his head. “Not Forerunners, no. There was never any trace of such here. But before the war Lugard did find some odd remains in one of the old lava caves. There was no time for investigation thereafter—the universal madness had already burst. So the find remained unexamined since Lugard himself was drafted off-world before he could make any concise explorations. There had been a collapse of a cave roof that sealed off the portion he was interested in. Now that he is free, he has returned. Since we will no longer have a garrison here, he claimed Butte Hold and a section of lava lands for pay due him and was given the grant. He has entered that in the port records. I gather that it will take him some time to locate the portion he is eager to find. There have been further subsidences of the land thereabouts, and it may be he will never be able to uncover it again. Now, Vere”—he spoke directly to me—“I do not want the children to be a disturbance to Lugard. Poor man, he has had much to suffer. We cannot be impatient with his views. He has lived with violence so long that he expects to find it everywhere. If he wishes for company—perhaps that of younger people—” Now he looked thoughtful and added, “Did he say aught of what was done before the Committee this afternoon? Make some comment on the decision?” “What decision, Father?” asked Annet, though I think she guessed the answer as quickly as I did—perhaps because it was more in keeping with her own views. “It has been decided to extend the offer of friendship and homeland to the refugees,” Ahren said a little impatiently before he returned to his main interest. “Lugard said nothing of this? Made no comments?” I was able to answer no truthfully, for he had not to us. “I told you.” Gytha was inclined to be impatient when she was caught up in some idea of her own. “He talked about animals, and he said we could come again. And he piped—” “Well enough. Yes, I see no harm in your going to the Butte again, but you will await some specific invitation from Lugard. On the other hand, Vere, you will go there tomorrow with a message from the Committee. We wish to affirm certain matters so there may be no misunderstandings later.” What the message was, I was not told. But I thought perhaps I knew part of what must be on the tape I took to the Butte the next morning. And when I handed it to Griss Lugard, the eyebrow on the normal side of his face twitched up and his wry smile curled. He had crawled out from under a complicated piece of machinery I did not recognize, though it bore a small resemblance to a cultivator, save that where it should have sprouted a plow nose, this had an arm, now folded under, with a sharp point at its apex. And there were moving belts along its left side with bucket-shaped pockets. Lugard flipped the roll of tape from one hand to the other, still smiling. “Official ease and desist?” But it seemed he asked that question more of himself than of me. “Or official grants to do as I will? Well, I suppose I better read so I can answer. What do you think of my monster here, Vere?” He seemed in no hurry to read his tape but now held it in one hand while, with the other, he traced along that belt of buckets, some upright, others reversed where the belt turned under. “Excavator.” He answered my unasked question. “Made for this country—see her creep-treads? But still anyone mounting her is going to have a rough ride back there.” He nodded to the lava lands. ”Then you are going to dig out a cave?” I do not know why I had continued to believe that Gytha’s story of Forerunner treasure and Ahren’s of archaeological exploration had seemed to me a screen. Had there really been a find of artifacts of some race preceding us on Beltane? “Dig out a cave? But of course, probably more than one. It’s all in my charter, boy.” But I thought he gave me a quick, measuring glance as if he wondered now about me as I did about him. “She needs a good overhaul—has been laid up too long, though this was meant for hard labor under difficult conditions. Look her over, if you wish.” He went into the hold with the tape. Though I had never seen an excavator of this type before, I could understand most of the functions of the machine. The spearpoint on the now folded arm must be used to chip away at obstructions, the bucket band carrying the debris away

from the work area. There were also two more attachments laid out on a plasta sheet, both smeared with preservative. One was a borer, the other a blower, both intended, I deduced, to fit on the end of the arm now carrying the pick. It was a relatively small machine, meant to be handled by one man, mounted on elastic treads that should see it through the lava country. And it should be a very efficient tool. I wondered what other machines had been stored at the Butte. Lugard must have been owed a vast amount of back pay to gain all this. Or else there was another answer. If conditions off-world were as chaotic as he described, perhaps somewhere a bureaucrat saw no reason to keep on his books a hold on Beltane and had been ready to sign it away—perhaps even for some private consideration Lugard could offer him? “So they did it, made their stupidly blind choice.” Lugard came up behind me as I surveyed the excavator. “You mean let the refugees in? But they may not be the menace you think them.” Lugard shrugged. “Let us hope so. Meanwhile, I shall make no attempt to corrupt innocent young minds with my off-world pessimism.” “Ahren gave you that warning?” He smiled but with little humor. “Not in so many words, no, but it is implied. I am to be a responsible citizen, well aware of my duties as well as my privileges. Was there anything said about the children not coming again?” “Just a warning to Gytha not to intrude if you were busied with your own affairs.” Now his smile was less of a grimace. “Good enough! And I’ll play fair in return—no more warnings. I could not convince them even if I used a ply drug probably. They’re as set in their own mental processes as that lava flow is glued to the mountain over there.” “They think the same of you,” I commented. “Which they would. But bring the children, Vere, if they want to come. The Butte is lonely sometimes. And they have quick minds. They might be far more of an aid than a hindrance.” “What are you hunting for?” I dared to ask then. “I suppose some would say treasure.” “Forerunners really?” My disbelief must have shown. He laughed. “No, I don’t think Forerunners, though we cannot rule out any possibility until we uncover the ice cave—always supposing I can locate it again. Ten years—such as I have spent—is a long time, and there have been changes in the land, too—several landslips and cave-ins.” “What about this ice cave?” I persisted. “We were exploring with the idea of developing storage centers,” he said. “Time was running out. We knew we might be at war shortly. And then there was always a chance that Beltane would not be safely behind any so-called battle lines but right out in a fleet blast. We needed hidey holes then, or thought we did. Lava caves run like tunnels. We opened several new ones and were exploring them. The squad I commanded found ice and things in it, enough to show that we weren’t the first to think of storing down there. There were supplies frozen in. But we had to close it off in a hurry. Security wanted no poking around at a critical time.” “Gytha found the story in an old news tape.”

Lugard nodded. “Yes—men talk. Rumor got out. So your father decided to make as innocuous a tale as he could. We admitted a find and said it was sealed pending the arrival of off-world experts. Then we really sealed the whole section. I figure it will take some work to open it up now, perhaps more than is feasible.” “But if conditions now off-world are so bad—” “Why do I want to go treasure hunting? Well, I have all the time in the world now, Vere. And I have no occupation. There is this equipment waiting to be used, and curiosity is nibbling at me, biting pretty sharply at times. Why not? Even if I am never able to find that cave again, or if I do, no one is going to be interested in my discovery except myself—but that is enough. Unless you and the children will—” I was. There was no denying the surge of excitement in response to Lugard’s story. And if he told the Rovers, there would be no holding them back. Help or hindrance, they would swarm to the Butte. “So, let me get this old pick-rock to working and we’re off—” He went to his knees and then lav flat to crawl under the excavator. “Meanwhile, if the children want to come, bring them, any time.” I repeated that invitation to Ahren when I returned to Kynvet, and, to my surprise, he was receptive to the idea that the Rovers might visit the Butte and take part in Lugard’s search. So in the weeks that followed, we did that several times. Once or twice Annet also joined us, always bringing food of her own to trade with Lugard for off-world supplies, an exchange that satisfied them both. In those weeks the refugees, having landed their ship, not at the port but well to the north in a spot they selected, settled quietly to their own affairs. Since most of our people were long conditioned to be concerned only with their work, there was little visiting between any of the settlements and the refugee camp. They came into port now and then, made requests for medical aid or supplies, and tendered in turn off-world products, some of which were eagerly welcomed by the sector people. It would seem that Lugard had been indeed wrong. That Lugard himself would have some contact with the off-worlders I should have foreseen, though knowing his estimation of them, I was surprised to find a flitter, definitely not one from the port, on the landing space by the Butte when I brought the hopper in one morning. As it happened I was alone, for which I was glad, since, had there been any witnesses to carry the tale of what happened— Lugard was at the door of the Butte, but he held no pipe in his hands. One hand swung idly at his side as he faced the two men standing before him; the other rested only inches away from a weapon leaning against the door, one that was not a conventional stunner. The men both wore shabby tunics that had been part of uniforms, and their deep tans said they were out of space. They kept empty hands ostentatiously in sight, as if in no way wishing to alert Lugard. I felt in the side rack of the hopper and loosed the stunner. Holding it in hand, I dropped out, to walk across the sand, my soft woods boots making no sound. But Lugard saw my coming. “Good guesting—” He raised his voice in the Beltane greeting. “High sun and a fair day,” I returned. The men turned in a swift movement, as if they had been drilled. I fully expected to see weapons facing me, but their hands were still empty. They stared at me blank-eyed. I was sure that neither would forget me and that they had quickly summed up my potential in relation to the scene. “The answer is no, Gentle Homos.” Lugard spoke now to them. “I have no need for aid in my work here—save what is offered by the settlers. And I have no wish to be overlooked while I work either.” The taller of the two shrugged. “It was only a thought,” he said. “We believed we might help a fellow veteran—a mutual-aid pact—” “Sorry—no!” Lugard’s voice was cool and final.

They turned and went, without a backward look. But still I felt a need to hold the stunner ready. I had never used even that defense save to control a man in such a temper as to unleash violence. But what I sensed emanating from the two now climbing into the flitter made a chill crawl between my shoulders. If I had been conditioned to nonviolence by my childhood training, then in that moment the conditioning cracked under an inheritance from generations of fighting ancestors. I could smell the cold promise of trouble. “What did they want?” I asked when the flitter lifted in an upsurge that blew sand spitefully around us and into the half-open door to the hold. “According to their story, employment.” Lugard’s fingers closed about the weapon he had had on display. He looked down at it, and his mouth was set. “We could not have expected they would not hear the treasure story—” “And they may be back, with reinforcements?” I asked. “With you alone here—” But at that Lugard laughed. “This is a Security hold, remember? I have devices to activate, if I wish, that will close this tight against anything they can bring up. No, this was just a try-on. But I tell you, Vere, when the Committee invited them in, they opened the door to night, whether they believe it or not. Now, what can I do for you?” I remembered my own news. “They’re going to give me a post—in the Anlav Reserve.” “How soon?” “Next month.” It seemed to me that he had gone tense when I had told him of my luck, almost as if he feared to hear it. But why? This was, as he had known from all the talking I had done, the only future I had on Beltane. And to get the appointment now, with no more putting off because I had no formal schooling, was a triumph due to my continued persistence. “Next month,” he repeated. “Well, this is next to second Twelfth Day. Suppose on third Twelfth Day we do a little celebrating out here? The whole of the Rovers, plus Annet, if she can come, and urge her to it, Vere. I’m getting close to a find. Maybe we’ll break through in time to make a double occasion of it.” I was distracted by his mention of a breakthrough. He would not say that unless he was sure of success, and again the excitement of a treasure hunt tingled in me. I agreed and spent some time working with him on a new machine, one meant to carry supplies but which he thought could be used to transport debris away from the promising cave he had just opened. When I returned to Kynvet, I found again a convocation of transportation in the yard. But the drivers were already taking off, and Ahren waved me out of the hopper with haste, almost climbing over me to take his seat at the controls. I went in and looked to Annet for an explanation. For once she was not busy at any household task but stood at the window watching her father away, a worried look on her face. “What has happened?” “There are two more ships in orbit. They say they want to join the refugees—that they were promised a place here.” “I thought there was a treaty for one ship only.” “They say that is a mistake, that the first ship meant to treat for them all. The Committee is going to talk with their representatives. They came down in a lifeboat.” I thought of Lugard’s disregarded warning, of the type of men who had visited the Butte, and of the

undefended and now undefendable port. That sensation of danger I had had at Butte Hold was again cold in me. But did Lugard know? And knowing, what could he do to defend people who would make no move to help themselves? “Dr. Corson says they seem very reasonable,” Annet continued. “After all, it is only just that they should want to be with their friends, and it could all be a misunderstanding. But they will have to put it to the full vote. Vere, what did Griss think of your news?” I told her of the invitation, and she nodded. “I think we could go. If they have a full vote, all the sectors combining, it will come about then, so they won’t mind what we do. It would be wonderful if he did find something and we had a chance to see it first!” She did not mention the refugees again. It was as if she purposely avoided a subject too indelicate or unpleasant to discuss. But I knew that from that hour it was always in our minds.

V FULL VOTE WAS decided upon we learned, which meant that all the adults at Kynvet, as well as those of the other settlements, would gather at the port. And the Ahrens, as well as the parents of the other Rovers, welcomed our plan for going to the Butte. I gathered that this time there was divided sentiment over allowing the landing of new ships, and there might be protracted argument. Perhaps some of Lugard’s warnings were beginning to make sense to the more suspicious members of the Committee. There were defenses at the port, but how much these had suffered from years of neglect no one really knew. And whether the handful of veterans who had returned could successfully activate them was also a question, not apparently that any move had been made to do this. We left early in the morning of the third Twelfth Day—the whole of the Rover crew: Dagny and Dinan Norkot, Gytha, Sabian Drax, Emrys Jesom, Ifors Juhlan, Pritha, and Thad, as well as Annet. We carried our field kits since this was to be a real trip into the lava country; the hopper was loaded to the point that we had to make a low flight with many rest runs on the ground. Thus, it was past the ninth hour when we set down at the Butte. Lugard was waiting, sitting at the controls of what had once been a squad troop carrier. He was impatient, but he left the loading of our kits to us, going back to the hold himself for a long moment just before we pulled out. When he returned, the leaves of the door clicked to behind him with so sharp a note that I turned my head just in time to see him slip the metal plate that locked them into the front of his coverall. So, did he fear that there might be visitors during our absence? I did not wonder at his precautions.

It might have been a tight fit in the squad carrier had we all been adults, but the children were reasonably comfortable as Lugard put it into gear and we rumbled out, Annet sharing the driver’s seat with him. The rest of us were wedged in against too much jouncing by our kits and bundles already there. I looked among those and in the sling behind his seat for the weapon he had had. But the arms slings were all empty, and if he carried any such, they were hidden. We all snapped on dark goggles as we crawled deeper into the knife-ridged land under the baking of the sun, which was reflected from the congealed flows. There was a crunched trail ahead twisting and turning upon itself, seeking the best passage. I thought that Lugard must have been this way many times before, though this was the first time he had taken us farther than past the first barriers of the forbidding territory. Scrapes along outcrops suggested that some of those trips had been made in vehicles larger than the troop carrier in which we now rode or the excavator he had first put into working order, and I wondered what other types of machines he had brought into use. His determination suggested that, though he made his reports in an either-or manner, saying he thought he could find again his ice cave but was not entirely sure, he inwardly was more certain and was set upon proving it. Now he took us along this very rough road at a pace that was the best a man might dare to hold in such broken terrain, as if there were a set hour for our arrival at the diggings and that it was important we not be late. As he had earlier explained, and we knew, the lava caves were tubes that one could enter only through the collapse of some roof section. We passed now more than one promising hole. Twice we crossed a “bridge” spanning such a drop. There were bright lichens and a fringing of moss here and there. We had made so many turns in our trail that, had there not been a compass on the board, I could not have truly said that the Butte now lay either behind or before us, for there was a deceptiveness to this land that I had never experienced before in the wilds of Beltane—as if the many frozen flows, cones, craters, and the like had been deliberately formed to confuse the eye and sense of direction. Time was also difficult to judge. Under the heat of the sun in this hot bowl country, it seemed very long since we had left the Butte. Yet when I looked at my watch, I discovered that we had been on our way less than an hour. We had seen no signs of life, but then the constant crunch-crunch made by our own progress would warn away any animals that chose such a waste for their homes or hunting grounds. We rounded at last a broken cone, which had the height of a steep-sided hill, and saw that the tracks led straight to a gap, above which was the skeleton frame of a derrick. Lugard pulled up beside that opening. He had a small platform to lower into the hole and suggested that I go down with Thad as the first to embark, while he worked the lift. I was not a speleologist and took my place somewhat gingerly on that unsteady surface, Thad facing me, our fingers interlaced on the safety cords, a pile of kits and one of Lugard’s bundles between our feet. We spun down, and it was a sensation I was glad lasted no longer than it did. The light was dim and not dark; yet the murk arose to engulf us as if we were being swallowed up by some great beast. It was cooler, a welcome relief from the parching of the sun without. I remembered that air movement underground was slow, and within a few feet of the entrance of any cave the temperature falls to that of the walls. Lugard had suggested we bring overtunics for that very reason, and now, shivering, I could see why. The platform made several trips, bringing two passengers and kits and supplies on each descent. I wondered at the number of boxes and bundles Lugard sent down, since there were not only those from the troop carrier, but also some from a pile waiting at the mouth of the cave. At last he swung over and down by himself, not drawing up the platform but using a rope with such ease

as showed he had done the same before, while the platform remained on the floor of the cave. I suspected he wanted it so as a means of protection. He had not mentioned any return of the refugee-ship people, but he might be taking precautions against surprise. However, I was also certain he would not have brought the children here had he believed there was any real danger. Only, what is danger? We were to learn the degrees of that without warning. Once below, Lugard switched on a beamer to reveal the road for us. Caves acted as cold traps in winter. Air settled to the lowest levels there to leave unending frost upon rock surfaces. Lugard was searching for an ice cave, and our path grew colder as we drew away from the entrance. We had gone only a few paces in when Lugard shot the beamer ray toward the roof. Untidy masses were plastered there against the walls only a handbreadth from the ceiling. We saw restless movement. “Westerlings!” cried Gytha. Long-billed avian heads swayed or bobbed up and down. Westerlings they were, in nests of bits of withered stuff and mud. They were night flyers, mainly noted for the action that gave them their name—their flocks flew almost always from east to west when aroused from feeding. But their nest colony was set close to the door into the open, and we were soon past them in the long bore that was the cave. This descended, not abruptly but at an angle, which did not make walking too difficult. I looked around for some signs that Lugard’s machines had been at work here. But there were no tread marks on the floor, no scrapes on the walls. At his asking we made use of the only aid he seemed to have imported into this stone tunnel—a small, treaded traveling cart, loading it with all the bundles he had brought down. But our packs we backed ourselves. Again I wondered at the reason for the pile of supplies, if supplies these were. We had journeyed for perhaps an hour when Lugard halted and suggested a rest. He himself pulled the bundles from the cart, piled them against the wall, and turned to face back as if it was now in his mind to return for those we had left. But he never had a chance. There was a wave of vibration through the walls of the cave, in the solidified layers of lava under our boots, giving one the sickening sensation that the world one had always accepted as solid and secure was that no longer. I heard a shrill scream and saw in the glow of the beamer wide frightened eyes and mouths opening on more cries of alarm. A small body lurched against me, and I instinctively threw out my arm to draw Ifors closer, while his fists balled wads of my coverall and he clung to me as if I were his only hope of protection. A second shock came, even worse than the first. Lava chunks broke loose, rattling and banging. I cowered, deafened by the sound, while dust arose about us in choking clouds. “Out—” I saw Annet staggering for the way down which we had come. She pushed before her one of the children and dragged another. A taller figure, which was Lugard, tried to intercept her, but, intentionally or not, she eluded him and wavered on. “Out! This way, children!” “Get her!” Lugard rounded on me with that order just as a third shock wave hit with force enough to send me crashing against one of the walls, Ifors still clutching me in a hold that could not be easily broken. I saw Lugard go down, while the beamer he must have put on the floor went into a weird dance as if the surface under it were rising and falling in quick, panting breaths. There were more falling chunks, some of them striking the supplies he had just unloaded. With one hand I fumbled with the buckles of my pack and managed to jerk at it until I was free of its burden. I saw Thad sitting down, a stunned expression on his face.

“After her,” Lugard panted. “The entrance—loose rocks—it may cave in—” He was struggling to get to his feet, but the last tremor had caused the bundles to land on top of him, and his lameness was to his disadvantage. I pried Ifors’ hold from my coverall, and the fabric tore as I tried to loose the shocked boy. “Thad! Take Ifors!” With a last rip I held him away from me and pushed him toward Thad, who was getting dazedly to his feet. The others were all there, Gytha, on her knees by the beamer, setting it steady again, Pritha in a small ball beside her, Emrys shaking his head and pawing at his eyes with both hands, Sabian—Only the twins and Annet were gone. To be caught in a collapse of the roof! I could share Annet’s fear, but if she were running straight into danger—and Lugard knew the ways of these burrows best—I could not run, not over this rough flooring, but using my belt torch, I went at the best pace I could manage, back along the trail, calling Annet’s name as I hurried. She had not gone so far that I could not overtake her. But what had halted her was a fall of rock that almost closed the tunnel. Far above we could see a small patch of sky. As I reached her side, she was pressed against the wall, looking up at the freedom out of her reach, the twins in her arms, their faces hidden against her. “Back! Lugard says it is dangerous here—the roof may come down!” I took a good grip on her arm. She tried to twist away, but my strength was greater than hers, though I could not drag her more than a pace or two back. And I feared a second collapse might crush us before we were beyond that danger point. “Out—” She tried to pull in the opposite direction, even though the way was blocked. “We have to get the children out!” “Not that way.” I pinned her to the wall with my shoulder, my face only inches from hers as I summoned her to reasoned thinking again. “Lugard says it is dangerous. He knows these caves, and there are other ways in and out—” However, I wondered at that. If the tackle for the platform had fallen—and surely such shocks had unseated it—then how could we get out, even if the fall choking the tunnel was loose and easy to clear? Someone would have to climb that shaft and see about the lowering ropes. And I knew who, though the thought of it made me sick, as my head for climbing was not good. Best get back to Lugard now and discover if there was another exit, one less demanding. “Lugard!” Annet almost spat the name at me. “He had no right to bring us here—to endanger the children!” “I suppose he could foresee this quake?” I demanded. “But we must get back. It is deeper and so safer back there.” But that was another bit of reasoning of which I was not sure. Reluctantly, she started back. I picked up Dagny, whose small body was convulsed with shudders. She was not crying but breathing in gasps, her eyes wide in her small face, clearly so deep in fear that she was hardly conscious of her surroundings. Annet half supported, half led her brother. We had not yet reached the others when there came another series of tremors. We crouched against the wall, the two children between us, sheltered by our bodies as much as possible. Rocks rolled, not only from overhead, but also down the slope of the cave. It was a miracle that none of them struck us. After a last jar there was again a period of quiet, and a new fear stirred in my mind. Once this had been volcanic country. Could such shocks as the earth had just suffered open some fissure on inner fires and set the cones to blazing again? Annet was so right in her instinctive flight for the surface, and the quicker we were out the better. “Vere! Annet!” Our names echoed hollowly up the corridor of the cave, the sound distorted and booming. I got cautiously to my feet, almost fearing that that small movement could bring a return of the tremors, so unsteady had our world suddenly become. “Here!” I answered, my voice hoarse from the dust drying my mouth and throat. Under my urging Annet got up also. I once more held Dagny while she led the boy,

and we took one cautious step after another on the down slope. Thus, we gained the halting place. Lugard sat on the cart, his right leg stretched out before him as he rubbed at it with both hands, working with a grim purpose and determination. He looked up as we came, and I saw a flash of relief in his eyes. “Aid kit.” He did not leave off rubbing his leg to point to where that lay in the tossed bundles and abandoned kits. but rather indicated it with his chin. “Give each of them one of the green tablets—they’re in shock.” He must have already so aided the others who needed it, for Ifors sat relaxed with his back against a bale and Pritha drank quietly from a canteen, while Thad was at work straightening out the mess of tangled boxes, Emrys helping him and Sabian standing by. Gytha knelt by Lugard, holding another canteen ready for his use. Annet crossed to stand directly before him. “How do we get out of here?” she demanded. “The children—” “Are probably far safer right here than on the surface now—” he told her. “In here?” she shot back incredulously. “With rocks coming down on their heads?” “It’s safer farther on. We’ll move now,” he said. “A quake—or quakes such as these—” I knelt beside him to ask my own question in a whisper. “What about renewed volcanic action?” “Quakes?” Lugard repeated. Then his mouth tightened in a grimace that might have been caused by pain in the limb he nursed. “You poor—” He checked himself and began again. “Those were not quakes.” “No?” Annet squatted on her heels, finding it too difficult to see eye to eye with Lugard since he did not rise. “Then what were they?” “Distributors.” For a moment I groped in the dark, and I do not think that Annet understood at all. Then the years-old meaning of the term struck home, and I think I gasped. I could have shuddered as deeply as Dagny was still doing against my shoulder. Distributors—an innocuous name for death and such destruction as Beltane had never seen, though such had made deserts of worlds as peaceful as this one. “The refugees?” My mind leaped to the only explanation. “Just so.” Lugard paused in his rubbing. Now he flexed his knee slowly and carefully, and he could not conceal a catch of breath when he set foot to floor. “What do you mean?” Annet’s voice rose, and Gytha drew closer. That stopped the work of his labor gang, and they all listened. “Distributors?” “Bombs.” Thad answered before Lugard could. I think that at that moment Lugard was angry with himself for revealing the truth, though it was indeed best that at least we older ones knew who and what we now faced. “Bombs!” Annet was entirely incredulous now. “Bombs—here on Beltane? Why? Who would do such a thing?” “The refugees,” I told her. “What chance—?” I wanted to ask the rest of that badly but knew better than to blurt it out, though at least Thad, as I could read the expression on his face, was already close behind me in thought. No, it was best not to think now of what might be happening up there and to whom. This was the time to concentrate on those locked in with me and the responsibility I had to the group I had so trustingly led into peril. I said directly to Lugard, “You knew—or suspected?” Slowly, he nodded. “I suspected from the first. I was sure last night.” “The com link?” Again he nodded. And the arm I held about Dagny tightened until she stirred and gave a soft cry, which was part moan. If Lugard had had warning of attack, then he had deliberately brought us here because—

He might have been reading my thoughts. “Because this is the safest place on Beltane—or in Beltane—here and now. I told you we opened passages for shelters here before the war. I’ve been reopening those. If I had had more time, if those poor benighted fools of the Committee had only believed me—we could all have been unharmed. As it is, we are safe—” “No!” Annet’s hands were at her mouth, smearing the dust across her chin and cheeks. “I don’t believe it! Why would they do such a thing? We gave them a home—” “They may have only wanted a base,” Lugard replied. There was a weariness in his voice, as if he had been driving himself to this point and that now, when his worst fears had been realized, he could no longer hold to such determined energy. “Also—perhaps the vote went against the two new ships, and those refugees were prepared to take what was not given.” “Where do we go now?” I broke the silence that followed. ”On.” Lugard nodded toward the passage. “There’s a shelter base down there.” I expected Annet to protest, but she did not, only got slowly to her feet and went for the aid kit. Lugard held out his hand. “Give me a boost,” he ordered. “We can use the cart for quite a while yet. Then we’ll have to pack in.” “These are supplies?” “Yes.” I helped him up, and he leaned against me for a long second or two before he tried to put his weight on his leg. Apparently, he could do that, and he took a limping step or two onward. But that it cost him more than just effort I deduced by a jerk of muscle beside his mouth on the untreated side of his face. While Annet tended the twins, we all set about loading the cart, though I thought that before long we would have to dump some of it and let Lugard, and perhaps the twins, ride. Thad and I shared the pull rope, and Gytha moved forward quickly and took up Lugard’s hand to settle it on her shoulder, providing him with a crutch of willing flesh and bone and redoubtable spirit. Annet carried Dagny, who lay against her shoulder with closed eyes as the sedative worked, while Emrys and Sabian between them guided Dinan along, and Ifors stumbled beside the cart, one hand on the lashings that fastened its cargo. We proceeded with many halts, and at last I persuaded Annet to lay Dagny on the cart. But in turn she took one of the bundles from the top. She did not try to argue any more. However, I thought that she still did not believe Lugard, and she must be raging inside to be out of the caves to prove him wrong. Twice we crossed mouths of other caves splitting from the road we had chosen, as if the long lava floods had divided. But Lugard always nodded to the main tunnel. He was sweating, the trickles of moisture down his face washing runnels through the dust. Now and then he breathed shallowly through his mouth. But it was I who called the halts, and he never made any complaint when we trudged on again. My watch told me we had been two hours underground when we made a more lengthy pause and ate. I saw Annet stare down at the food she unwrapped and guessed at her thoughts. High among them must be disbelief that this could be happening, had happened since this morning, when she had set together those rounds of bread with a preserve of irkle fruit—fruit she had stewed herself and stored in the cupboard at Kynvet. Did Kynvet exist now? Lugard made only a pretense of eating, though the children were hungry and wolfed down all we gave

them. I wondered if we should hold back a portion. How long must we stay in these caverns? Lugard had brought supplies—food, water—but— And if we went out, what would we face? Suppose the refugees had finished off—though my mind shied from that, and I had to force myself to face a very grim guess-the sector people? Would we fare any better were we to turn up after the initial massacre? Yet Lugard must believe we had a chance for survival or he would never have labored so. He was fumbling in the front of his tunic, having set aside most of his food untouched. Now he brought out his pipe. Beside me Annet moved and quickly checked. Perhaps she had been about to protest. But if so, she thought better of it. So in the depths of that cave, with our world reft from us, Lugard played. And the magic he wove settled into us as a reassuring flood of promise. I could feel myself relaxing; my whirling thoughts began to still, and I believed again. In just what I could not have said, but I did believe in the rightness of right and that a man could hope and find in hope truth. I shall always remember that hour, though I cannot now draw back into mind the song Lugard played. The feeling it left in me I do know, and regret I shall not have it to warm me again, for of all we lost on that day, we had still to face the greatest blow from what men call fate. It began when Lugard put down his pipe and we awoke out of the spell he had woven to soothe us. There was another sound, and it had nothing to do with music. Lugard’s head went up and he cried out, “Back against the walls!” We moved as if his shout had been a blaster aimed at us. I hurled Annet, Dinan with her, back and swept up Gytha and Emrys to join them, while across I saw Thad, jerking Ifors and Pritha, stumble toward the opposite wall. “Dagny!” Annet screamed. She had been lying asleep on the roll of blankets by the cart, and now she was out of reach—out of ours, but not Lugard’s. I saw him lurch forward and his arm crook about the little girl. He swept her back and away from himself. But when he would have followed, his leg gave way under him, and he sprawled on his face, while the glow of the beamer made it all clear. There was a rushing rock slide down the core of the cave, not directly from overhead. And before I could move to pull him free, that slide swept over and about him as might the flood of a river in high spate.

VI THE SAME RIVER of rock had knocked out the beamer, and we were choking in the dark, coughing and hacking in the dust. For a moment I could do no more than lean against the wall and try to ease my tortured lungs. Then somehow I got my belt light on. In the place of the wide rays of the beamer, it was only a small thrust against the dark. And what it showed made me want to switch it off again. Our cart, which had been left in the middle, must have acted in part as a dam, though the force of the sweep had carried it on. And in the debris that had piled up behind it—Lugard—he must be caught in that! “Gytha! Dinan! Thad!” Annet’s voice, so husky that the names could barely be distinguished, rang out from beside me. She was calling the roll. One by one they answered. But I was already at the pile of rocks and Thad not long in joining me. We had to work with what seemed painful slowness since the stuff moved and we were afraid of starting a second slip. Then Gytha joined us, also lighting her belt torch, and Emrys. Lights flashed on, giving us a good sight. Annet took from me the stones I freed to put to one side, and I saw each of us had such a co-worker. We made no sounds except the coughs that hurt the throat, and I knew that all were doing as I did, listening with both fear and hope gnawing at them. We had to go so slowly when there was such a need for speed. It was part of the cargo of the cart that had protected him from an instant crushing death we discovered when we had him free. By some chance, two of the bundles had fallen on either side of his body, providing a part defense. I hardly dared to move him from where he lay face down. He made no sound, and I was certain he was gone, but we cleared a space about him, and Annet quickly unrolled blankets, spreading them out as long as his dust-covered body. Somehow we got him over, face up, on that small easing. His eyes were closed, and there was a dark trickle from the corner of his mouth. I am no medico, my knowledge being only enough to provide first aid in an accident. He had broken bones and, I was sure, internal injuries. Annet had the kit open. Luckily it lay close to the wall against which Lugard would have been safe had he not returned for Dagny. But there was little in that save what might alleviate pain for a short time. And to move him, even onto the cart, could kill him, but it could be our only chance to save him. “Get the cart free,” I ordered Thad. “Then strip it down.” He nodded and shooed the other boys before him to that task. Annet spilled some water to sponge Lugard’s face from her canteen onto a strip of cloth she tore from an inner garment, and under her touch his eyes opened. I had hoped he would remain unconscious. Such hurts as he had taken must keep him in agony. I saw his lips move and leaned over him. “Don’t try to talk—” “No—” He got that out as a whisper. “Map—inner seal pocket—get on—to safe quarters.” Then his face went oddly slack, and his mouth fell loose, while the trickle from it became a dark froth, which Annet wiped away. My hand felt for the pulse at his throat; I feared to try to touch his chest to hunt for heart beat. He was not gone—not yet. Only I did not believe he could stand even lifting to the cart, and to carry him in a blanket would be worse. There were supplies ahead—he had mentioned that earlier. Suppose there were medical ones among those? Lugard had had all the stores of the Butte to plunder. In such there might be something—though one part of my mind told me that anything less than quick hospitalization at the port would not save him. But you cannot sit and wait for death, not when there is the slimmest of fighting chances. Annet must

have agreed with that, for she looked across to me. “Take the map, go on. There may be things there—” But to leave the rest—Again she read my indecision. “It is the best. We cannot move him now. There may be a stretcher there—other things—” “And if there is another rock fall?” I demanded. “We can pull the blankets over there.” She nodded to the side, her hands still busy with that patient washing away of the ever-gathering blood foam. “We shall have to do that much. And we shall stay there. We can’t leave him here, and we can’t wait forever. There has to be something—perhaps a better cart. You must try it, Vere.” We pulled Lugard a few inches at a time over to the wall. As gently as I could, I unsealed his stained tunic and took out a folded piece of plasta-mat. The lines on it caught fire from our lamps, and I saw it was drawn with cor-ink for use in limited light. But the branching passages on it were many, and it took me a moment’s study to locate the tunnel that held us. Once I had traced that from our entrance point, I could see the path ahead running reasonably straight. And perhaps Lugard’s secure place was not too far beyond. Thad had found the beamer and set it up. It had been made for hard usage in the field, and after he had tightened a loose connection, it flashed on again. I took up one of the canteens, longing to drink but prudence warned me to endure the thirst as long as I could and conserve water, the more so as we found that the tank of liquid on the cart was leaking. Annet moved quickly to add what she could of its contents to all our canteens and began hunting around for other possible containers. I stood for a long moment over Lugard before I left. He was still breathing, and as long as a man lives, there is hope. I clung to that as I went. The beamer provided a beacon behind me for a space, but I did not turn to look at it. Then I came to one of those divisions of ways, and this time my fire-drawn map said not to stay on the main course but to take a new. Within moments I was in the dark and flashed on my belt torch. Caves have their inhabitants, which vary with the depth, moisture, content, and the like. I had seen in the labs some blind creatures taken out of this eternal dark. Beltane had once had a small bio-speleology department, but when Yain Takuat had died, there had been no replacement for his specialty. Only the creatures I had seen had come from the moist water-formed caves, while this was different country. I swept my light from side to side, hunting for any hint that this was not just dead rock. I would have welcomed a single slime trail, a single flatworm clinging to the roof overhead. What my light did pick up was a curl of skin and bones rolled against the wall. I took a step closer. My first aversion was not justified—these were no human remains but the dried remnants of a wart-horn, one larger than I had seen before. But those lived in swamps. What was such doing here? Unless there was some outlet in the maze, leading to water, and the thing wandered in and became lost. That was reassuring in its way with the promise of water. It was only a little way beyond that I came to where Lugard had said we could not take the cart, for here the floor of the tunnel, which had been sloping gradually all the way since we had left the surface, now gave way. There were a series of ledges—a giant staircase—to descend. I looked at it in despair. We could never get Lugard down unless we could find some aid— I thought of a stretcher, even a section of crate or box. Could he be lashed tightly to that and lowered? When one is desperate, one can always improvise. Now I swung from one ledge to the next, my belt torch showing a wild scene of fallen rubble and bad footing below. The air here was colder, far more so with every ledge I passed. I found it hard to lay hand to the

surfaces of the rock, for there was frost on some of them. Then I reached the bottom and picked a way among heaps of fallen scree. There was a path here. Heavy objects had been dragged along, leaving a road. I wondered at the energy Lugard had expended. Or were these signs left by those who had once thought to make an underground war retreat before Butte Hold had been closed? This lower cave widened out from the narrow end where I entered. Then my light picked out what was there, and I was startled into a full stop. There were structures, three of them, though my light could barely reach the end of the farthest one. Between them were stockpiles of boxes and crates. Lugard certainly could not have done all this. It was the remains of the plan never carried through. Each of the buildings was walled with cor-blocks, which had probably been fused together on the spot. They each possessed a single door in one wall but no other openings. And the roofs were half arcs made of sheets of cor that had been welded into solid masses. If they had been locked, Lugard must have opened them. Perhaps the same master key that controlled the Butte door also worked here. The first I explored must have been intended for a headquarters, perhaps also a com center. The divisions in it did not reach the ceiling but arose about seven feet from the floor to make three rooms of the structure. One had two desks, a rank of files, and the board of a small computer. The next had banks of com boards almost as elaborate as those in the Butte. I tried to activate one. I do not know what I hoped for—perhaps to reach some answer on the surface—but here all was dead. The third and last “room” had four bunks and very simple living arrangements—by the look never put to use. The next building held more bunks in one large room and at its end a smaller compartment with a cooking unit and water taps. I turned one, and there was a thin trickle from it, dripping down into a cor-basin. Water, anyway. In the third building was a bewildering array of control boards, not coms I was sure. Perhaps they were meant to aim and fire missiles or destructs—weapons that might never have been installed on the surface at all, or if they were, had been dismantled when the last of the Security forces were ordered into space. I went back to the bunkhouse. One of the light metal cot frames there was the only possible stretcher I could find. It took me some time to loosen it from the support stanchions. I looked at my watch. It must be well after nightfall now—not that day or night had any meaning here. At least the buildings had been insulated against the cold and could be made warmer if we could use the heating units. We had a far safer refuge here than I had hoped for. The bunk frame made an awkward burden to pack, and I had found no rope we could use for making Lugard fast to it or for lowering it back down the cliff. Perhaps we could cut blankets into strips to serve. The climb up the ledges pulling the frame with me was a struggle that left me panting and ready to take a long rest when I at last reached the top. Only there was no time for that now. At last I dragged it behind me, changing hands time and time again as my fingers cramped about the end rod. It scraped and banged along the rock, making enough din to give one an aching head. I had to stop again and again to flex my fingers free of cramp lest I lose the use of my hands. It was just too heavy to carry along and too large to drag well. Also it caught now and then on rough bits of rock, and I had to halt to free it, until the whole world shrank to my struggle with the stubborn thing and I could have gladly smashed it to bits with my bare hands. I came out of the side tunnel and saw the light of the beamer. A black shadow ran toward me, and Thad came into the light of my own torch. He stared for a moment then hurried up to lay hands on the frame. I unhooked my fingers one by one and let him take it, and I staggered a little as I went. “What’s it like?” Thad asked. “Good.” I rasped hoarsely. “Lugard?”

“Still alive.” I had not dared to hope that would be the answer. But if he continued to hold to life and we could get him down to the lower cave—I had not hunted for medical supplies, but surely there would be some. It was all I could do to make the gathering by the cart. I went to my knees there, breathing heavily, while Thad thumped the bunk frame flat on the rock. Annet had covered Lugard, all but his face. She no longer wiped the dribble from his lips. That had stopped, and I could not guess whether that was a good or bad sign. “Tie him on that.” I made my idea as simple as I could. “Take him on the cart. But we will have to lower him to another cave. They had a Security base down there—even houses—” “Houses?” she echoed. She held out to me an E-ration can from which she had just twisted the self-heating top. The smell of it was so good that I stretched out my hands, but my fingers were so numb that I would have dropped it had her grasp not continued. She held it to my lips, and I drank the rich contents, their warmth and refreshment bringing me out of the fog of fatigue. “Installations in them,” I said between gulps. “But there is a bunkhouse. We can camp out there.” Annet glanced down at Lugard. “He is unconscious—” “Better so.” It was the truth. We must handle him to get him on the bunk frame and to secure him there. I did not want to think what that might do to his broken body. Only I—we—had no choice. To go on gave him a slim chance; to stay, that was to do nothing but wait for the inevitable end. And there might be a second rock fall, though Annet assured me that nothing had threatened while I was gone. We worked as best we could, lifting Lugard in the blanket, settling him on the bed frame, then winding about it all the strips Gytha and Pritha cut from our blankets, rendering him as immovable as possible. The supplies, except for our own kits, we stacked to one side of the cave, but our packs we took with us. The frame we had slung on blanket straps that went about my shoulders and Thad’s so we could lift him to the cart. So we transported him at a slow pace, Annet and the children at the sides, the cart, with Thad and me to steady it, down the center. Gytha, with the beamer, was our forescout, and with such light it was easy to avoid the roughest bits. Yet all our straining could not make it really smooth going. I was ridden by the need for haste; yet that we dared not attempt. The framework that held Lugard was balanced precariously on the cart, and the least shift, in spite of our efforts to steady it, might send it crashing to the rock. We turned into the side that led to the lower cave. Annet came once to look into Lugard’s face. There had been no sign he was conscious. I hoped he was not. “We must get out. He needs help—Dr. Symonz at the port.” If there was still a Dr. Symonz and the port, I thought. But either she continued to hold stubbornly to the idea that Lugard was wrong in his story of bombing, or else she wanted to preserve hope for the children. I had no intention of trying to find out which. I was too busy trying to plan for that drop down the ledges. “Look!” Emrys pointed to the withered carcass of the wart-horn. “What’s that?” “A wart-horn, silly,” Gytha answered. “Probably got in here and was lost. But then he must have come from water—” She made the same deduction I had. “There’s water below,” I returned, “but it’s piped in.” But those pipes came from somewhere. And water could be a guide to the outer world. We came at last to the drop, and Gytha swung the beamer down the slope to pick up in bright light and dark shadow all the roughness of that descent. I heard an exclamation from Annet.

“Down there! But we’ll never be able to lower him—” “We have to. I didn’t have any luck finding ropes, though.” I stared dully down that stairway of ledges, the threatening slope of scree at its foot. To go down and return—I did not know whether I had the strength. But Thad had the answer. “Emrys, Sabian, uncoil what we found!” At his order the two younger boys began to pull lengths from beneath their tunics. What they had when they spread it on the floor was no conventional rope that could be trimmed or broken, but strands of tungfors—the same alloy that was used to coat rocket tubes. These had been fashioned as chains, and there were hooks of the same durable metal at either end. “Found ’em in the supplies we had to dump,” Thad reported. “They what we need now?” I could not have done better had I been able to pick and choose from a variety of equipment, and I said so as we laid them straight. They would reach from one ledge to the next, but whether we could take the strain of Lugard’s weight for lowering I did not know. “You go ahead with the children,” I told Annet. “Thad Emrys, Sabian, and I, we’ll try to manage it. But I want you all safely down and out of the way first.” I could foresee that a single slip might rake us all from our feet and send us crashing, not only to our own peril, but also to that of anyone ahead. She might have protested, but then she looked at Dagny, whom she had carried most of that weary way. “How? Yes, the pack harness!” She laid the little girl on the floor and began to shuck her own burden. “I don’t believe that—” “I can do it!” She turned on me with some of the same fierceness she had shown when she tried to reach the surface after the bombing. And I could not deny her the effort. What strength I had left I must use for Lugard. So we watched as they went over one by one—Gytha first, having shored up the beamer on the lip of the cliff to give light, taking Pritha’s hand, cautioning her not to look down but only immediately before her; then Ifors; and last and very slowly, with Dinan between her and Ifors, Annet, Dagny made fast to her in the pack harness. Luckily, the ledges made a fairly easy descent, but the treacherous pile below troubled me more. I shivered with far more than the outer cold of that place as I watched them win, shelf by shelf, to the floor below. Gytha was down, then the others—all but Annet, who moved slower and slower. By my own experiences in dragging the bunk frame, I could understand what wearied her. She rested for what seemed to me a very long time before she made the final drop into the scree. Then they were all crawling through that. Emrys moved to loose the beamer. I shook my head. “Leave that! We shall need all the light we can get.” “How do we go now?” Thad wanted to know. I could see only one way—perhaps not the best, but the only one visible to me. “Hook these, one end up here.” I picked up one of the chains. “Other on the stretcher. One of us gets down to the ledge to steady it. I lower one line—you two the other.” Thad nodded. “Sabian to do the steadying.”

Sabian was the smallest. We would need our major strength on the lowering. I looked to him. “Think you can do it?” “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Can’t tell till I try, can I?” With that he slipped over to reach the surface of the first ledge and stood there, looking up, his eyes large and dark in a face that seemed unusually pallid by the beamer’s glare. We set the hooks in the frame at either end and tested their hold. The others we pounded into the rock beyond the lip and again tested. Then we slid the frame and its silent burden toward the lip and began what were the worst hours of my life. It took us more than two hours to make that slow crawl down since we paused on each ledge to test, to rest the strain in our shoulders and arms, to bend over Lugard and hear those painful bubbling breaths and know that we still dealt with the living and not the dead. I lost all measure of time as I had known it in a sane and normal world. This was time as some evil being might have conceived it as a special torture. During the last part I moved in a kind of thick fog, so that when we came to stable footing I collapsed, unable to do more than breathe shallowly. Nor were the other boys any better. Emrys lay limp at the side of the frame; Thad hunched at its other end. I heard a shuffle and then a thin cry of welcome. “Annet!” Something was pushed into my hands and, when I could not hold it, held then to my mouth. Again I sucked feebly, rather than drank, a hot mouthful of ration. I knew that such emergency food was laced with restoratives, but whether that could get me on my feet again now, I doubted. In the end we staggered along while Annet, Gytha, Pritha, and Ifors made use of the blanket shoulder straps and carried the frame and Lugard ahead of us. I roused enough to put an arm about Emrys’ shoulders and pull him up and to give some support to Thad. My shoulders and arms had gone numb. Now they began to ache, first dully and then with increasing pain. We slipped and slid, though we never did quite fall, until we were past that treacherous pile and in the wider part of the cave. There was a blaze of light streaming from the door of the barracks, and to that we were drawn. I remember crossing its threshold, looking dully at the room—for the rest nothing at all. When I awoke, I was lying on the floor, under me a pad that I had stripped from the bunk I had earlier dismantled. And I ached—how I ached!—as if my arms had been pulled from shoulder sockets, the bones of my spine put to such strain as no man could be expected to take. Perhaps I made some sound. Even turning my head required painful effort. Annet’s face hung over me, a face drawn with dark shadows beneath the eyes and a set to the lips I had never seen before. “So, you’re awake—” Her voice was sharp, and something in the tone brought the immediate past into focus. I tried to sit up and found it an effort. She made no gesture to aid but sat back on her heels watching me with a kind of impatience in her tense position, as if she had been waiting too long for me to move. I rubbed my hands across my face, felt the grit of rock dust between palm and cheek, and blinked. “Lugard?”

“Is dead.” She answered me flatly. I think my first reaction was a kind of anger that all our struggle had been for nothing, almost anger at Griss that he should have slipped away when we had done what we could to keep him with us. And after that another thought grew. With Lugard gone, who did we have to turn to? As long as I had had the problem of getting him to this shelter, I had never looked beyond. There had been a kind of completion when we reached the foot of the cliff, as if our greatest struggle now lay behind. But that was not the truth. Somehow I wobbled to my feet. Thad lay in a bunk to my left; beyond him, sharing another, were the two others who had aided in our ordeal on the ledges. From the back room where the cooking unit was installed, I heard the murmur of voices. “Vere, you’re awake!” I turned my head slowly. There was a feeling that if I tried any swift movement, I might fall apart. Gytha came out of the mess room. She caught me by the arm. “Come on—supper is ready. You slept most of the day.” I yielded to her pull. Annet was on her feet, too, and when I staggered, she suddenly put out her hand to steady me. “There is plenty of food anyway,” she said, as much to reassure herself, I thought, as me. “And the cook unit runs.” Perhaps the smells were not as enticing as the ones back in a Kynvet kitchen, but they seemed to me to be so at that moment.

VII I HAD TO PROP both elbows on the narrow table to steady my hands in order to raise a mug of steaming caff to my lips. As its warmth flowed down my throat, I awakened out of the daze of fatigue and not caring that had fallen on me at the bottom of the cliff. Annet sat down opposite me, her hands resting on the table top—lying I should have said, not resting, for there was such an aura of tension about her that her unease flowed across the surface dividing us. “He was mad—he must have been—” she said flatly. “You felt the tremors.” I would not let her build vain hopes. I had seen the two refugees at the Butte, and I could and did believe that Lugard had overheard something on the com, enough to let him think we were fleeing actual danger. Far from being mad, I had come to suspect he had been perhaps the sanest man on Beltane when it came to foreseeing and assessing the future. But now—

“Did he regain consciousness before he—went?” I asked. If there were only something I—we—could use as a guide! She shook her head. “He was breathing heavily. Then—all at once—that stopped. Vere, what are we going to do—if we can’t get back the way we came?” I put down the mug to bring out the map. Now I spread it flat on the table. In the steady light of the barracks, I was not so fully aware of the phosphorescence of its markings, but they remained plain without that addition. From the entrance Lugard had found, I traced with a forefinger the path to our present camp, the huge lower cave. From that three passages spread. Two of them seemed to lead to surface outlets. But I remembered Lugard’s saying that this whole section had been sealed by Security in the days before Butte Hold was closed. He had opened this way with hard labor—but he had not had time, I believed, to do so deal with the others, even if he had wanted to. There was no use in expecting the worst before it was proven, as I now said to Annet. She wanted us all to go as soon as we could. But I argued against further disappointment and perhaps shock for the younger children. Finally, it was agreed that I could try by the map both those passages. But before I left, there was one more duty, and it was a hard one, perhaps more so for some of us than others. Ideally, one does not bear resentment for the dead, but I think Annet looked upon Lugard as a madman whose twisted fears had involved us in disaster. She would not have wished him dead, but she had no tears for him now. However, she shared with me the covering of his body by a plasta-sheet out of the stores. While we did so, something slipped from the blanket strips that had kept him secure during that dark journey I did not want to remember. It crunched under my boot, and I picked up a shard of the pipe with which he had wrought his magic. It must have broken when he took his hurt. Now I searched and gathered up all the bits from the rock and tucked them carefully back under the edge of his tunic. “Not Dagny,” Annet said abruptly when we had it done. “Nor Pritha, nor—” “Yes, Pritha.” She spoke for herself. “And all of us, Annet, yes!” So in the end, Thad and I carried the stretcher back into the rubble by the descent. And the rest of them, save Dagny who still slept under sedatives, followed. We could not dig in the rock, but we fitted the frame into a crevice and with our hands covered it, first with gravel we scooped up, and then with rocks, until we had built a recognizable mound. I wished for a laser so that I could mark the wall beyond. But, in spite of all that had been left here, we had found no weapons. We had only the stunners worn by Annet, Thad, and me. Gytha dragged one last rock up and, with an effort, set it atop. I saw the shine of tear tracks on her cheek. “I wish—I wish we could have played the pipe. He—he was a gentle man, Vere.” Gentle was not an adjective I myself would have applied to Griss Lugard, but I remembered his ways with the children and knew that she saw him aright from her point of view. Suddenly, I was glad that this could be remembered of him, along with his courage and his belief that he must do what was to be done. That he did believe he had saved us, I had not the smallest doubt, let Annet think as she would. Yet she, too, could not leave him so. She clasped one hand with Gytha, held the other to me, while I took one of Thad’s, and he Emrys’—and we made a linked circle about that grave of a starman who would never see the stars again. And she began to chant the “Go with Good Will,” we picking up the words after her until the song arose and awoke eerie echoes. We cared not for those but sang on to the end. I decided it was best to wait for morning before I set out on my exploration of the other ways, though night, day, morning, noon, and evening were all relative here, marked only by the hours of my watch. Meanwhile, we opened more of the stock-piled supplies, finding blankets to replace those we had cut

apart, food in concentrated rations—enough to last for a long time—and some digging equipment. However, there were no weapons, and the coms in the headquarters structure remained obstinately silent, though we tried them at intervals. Perhaps Lugard had activated only part of the installations here. We had heat in the barracks and a workable cook unit—which was a blessing, since the chill of the cave was biting. There was some additional clothing, all Security uniform issue, so too large for any of us save Annet and me. There were several beamers, all in working order, and more of the climbing ropes such as Thad had found in the other supplies. The children worked eagerly sorting out what we could use. But as I was dragging along a box of concentrated fruit paste, I saw Thad standing apart at the door of the structure I thought might be a missile control. I dumped the box by the workers and went to him. “What is it?” He started at the sound of my question and turned his head a little. He did not meet me eye to eye, his attitude evasive. “This is a weapons control, isn’t it, Vere?” “I think so.” “Then, if one could use it, one might blow those—those devils right off Beltane—” “You believe then that Griss Lugard was right?” I counter-questioned. Having been faced so long with Annet’s stubborn contention that we were victims of one man’s obsession, I was almost surprised to hear this acceptance. “Yes. Vere, could we activate this?” “No. The missiles it was meant to fire are either long dismounted or missing. When this base was closed down, it was stripped of arms, and they wouldn’t leave the most important behind. Also, even if it were activated and ready, we could not just use it blindly.” “I suppose so. But, Vere, what if we get out to find they have taken over? Then what do we do?” He brought into the open the question that had been plaguing me. Lugard, judging by the preparations he had made, must have planned a stay here for some time. But I knew that Annet, unless it was proved to her that there was greater danger on the surface, was not going to agree to any such thing. She had will and determination enough that if I did not try to find a way out, she would leave on her own. But if we went, I was also determined to make every move slowly and not run blindly into the very danger Lugard had died to save us from. “We can scout. I don’t think anyone will be interested in the wastelands,” I began and then wondered. The rumor of Forerunner treasure, would that attract the attention of the refugees if they were now in command up there? However, the waste might have been designed for hiding. And if we were up with a clear road of retreat back to this base, then— “Guerrilla warfare?” Thad demanded. “Warfare? With the Rovers? Be sensible, Thad. We can hide out if need be, for years. We’ll just take it slowly until we can find out what happened.” He was not satisfied as I could see, but for the present I would not have to fear any rash action on his part. And of that I made doubly sure by appealing to his sense of responsibility and putting him in charge during my absence. We slept away the rest of the period marked by the watches as “night.” It was about eight o’clock the following morning, our third underground by such reckoning, that I set off on my exploration. I wished that I had a hand com with which to keep in touch with the base, but all such devices were as lacking as weapons. In fact, there

were odd gaps in the supplies, and I wondered whether Lugard was responsible for the selection. Were coms missing so we could not attempt to signal the surface and so attract the very attention we had the most to fear by his belief? I copied the map on a sheet of plasta, leaving that with Annet. Also I made her promise not to stir until my return and told Thad privately to make sure of that. Then, with a light pack, I walked resolutely away from the spot of light that was the camp. I glanced back once to see them lined up as dark shadows against that light. Someone, I thought by the size Gytha, raised a hand in salute, which I answered with a wave. The left-hand passage was my first choice since it appeared to be the larger of the two possibles, though it was only a tunnel compared to the cave behind. I was heartened into believing I had chosen right when the rays of my belt torch picked up scrapings on the wall showing this way had been enlarged. It did not slope downward, as had the original one we had followed, but ran on a fairly level line. But within an hour I came to the cork that had painstakingly been put into it. Someone had used a laser to good purpose. I could make out in the stiff mass that sealed the tunnel the half-melted bulk of work machines, mingled with rock that must have gone molten under the rays. They had driven their construction vehicles in here, piled rock about them, and used a high-voltage laser to convert the mass into a plug we had no hope of shifting. That Lugard had done this was not possible. It had been a Security operation. I was puzzled. Why had they worked so to close off this underground retreat, as if they had some treasure to hide? Unless, of course, it was that control building—And if they had been forced to leave missiles in place here— I considered that. Thad might have the right of it after all. We could hold under our hands an answer to any attempt to take over Beltane. Only I had not the least idea how we could put such a system to work, nor dared we try any experiments without knowing what was going on on the surface. No, that was out of the question. Only it was plain that great efforts had gone into the concealing of this base in the past. If Lugard had known, then perhaps he had intended eventually to put it to our defense. Just another of the secrets he had not shared with us, and now it was too late. I examined that congealed mass section by section, hoping to uncover some weak point, perhaps near the ceiling where the lava caves were the easiest to force. But there was no hope of that here. So I turned back, to seek the other passage on the map. When I came from the mouth of the first tunnel, I looked toward the camp. They had closed the door of the barracks. There was no longer any light since the huts lacked windows. Should I report my first failure? But that was a waste of time. Better be sure of the second now. The second tunnel wound on and on, and there were no marks on its walls to suggest it had been in use until my torch picked out, canted to one side, its roll tread caught in a fall of rock, another of those carts like the one Lugard had used. Somehow it gave the impression that those who had left it so had been in haste—to get out? Was there an opening just ahead? My deliberate pace quickened to a trot, always allowing for the rough footing, as I pushed past the derelict. The tunnel-cave was angling to the right even more and sloping down, which was a disappointment, though good sense told me that no opening formed by a lava flow could have gone up. So I came to the second disappointment, a fall of rock, again fused into an impassable wall. But there was something different about this one. I was not sure—I could not be—only I thought it was not ten years old but only days. Had this been done by Lugard? It seemed less cold here. There was no frost pattern on the walls. Then I caught the gleam of metal and went down on one knee by a weapon—the very one, or its twin, that I had seen beside the door of the Butte when Lugard had faced the refugees. It was as new as it had looked then. I did not think it had lain here for

long. I picked it up with a rush of excitement and pointed it at the top of that fused pile with some idea of burning through. But when I pressed the firing button, there was no answer. The charge it had carried must have been exhausted in the making of the barrier. Now I was sure Lugard had closed this door. But why? Why had he wanted to seal us in? The preparations for a long siege and now this—What had he so feared might lie upon the surface that he took such drastic precautions? Was it only to save our lives, or was there some secret here that must be guarded—so his move would serve two purposes? I sat down on the floor, holding the laser, and tried to think. Not that any guess of mine might even come near the fringe of fact. All I could light upon was that I might find some clue back at the camp—either left by Lugard or those who had first built and then left that base. For our own protection, we should have as much of the truth as we could uncover. There was the third passage, the one I had not believed worth exploring. Should I attempt that before I returned—or get back for a more intensive search of the headquarters structure or the silent missile control? In the end, I decided in favor of return, and I took Lugard’s discarded weapon with me. There was a small chance that I might discover a charge for it and could then use it to burn us through one of those plugs. It was past noon, and I was hungry, so I ate before I began my retreat up the tunnel. And it was as I was idly surveying the walls about me that I saw, in the smooth dust of the floor by one, a line of prints. Much as I knew of the creatures of the Reserves, this was no track I had seen before. The prints were as long as my hand, which certainly argued for a creature of some size, and they were marked by three long toe lines, so thin as to suggest a foot near to skeleton. Had some other thing been lost like the wart-horn, to drag its starving body along? And these had been made since Lugard had set this barrier! I had not noted them coming down the tunnel, and there had been no places along it where any large thing could hide. More than ever now I wished that the bio-speleology lab had not closed and that I had some reference to what lived naturally in these underground regions. Of course, life that sought out the lava caves for a refuge would not be like that found in the moisture dripping, water-cut caves. I hunched forward to measure my hand to the print. The fine sand and grit gave no impression of depth, so that one could not guess at the weight of the creature. But I did not like the looks of it in the least. And the three-toed structure was that, I believed, of some reptilian form of life. It had, I decided after closer study, come down the cave tunnel on one side, been stopped by the barrier, and crossed over to retrace its way up the other. Apparently, it had an affinity for walls, since the marks kept close to them. I stowed away my empty ration tube and arose, playing the torch down on the tracks that led back toward the big cave. They could have been made an hour before I came this way—or a day or a week—whenever Lugard had put that seal here. But I disliked the thought that an unknown thing might be lurking near the base camp. If it were carnivorous and starving—why, it might charge anyone in sight. A stunner will act quickly on any warmblooded creature, but its effect, unless on high beam, was much slower for a reptile, and we kept our weapons on low beam. So I scrambled along the tunnel at a faster pace than I had so far used that day. When I came to the cart, the prints moved out from the wall and were lost in the central rock. As I played my torch closer over the transport, I saw a ragged tear in one of the treads. Such clean-cut edges could not have come from rocks. They looked far more to me like rents left by claws. And claws able to break the tough substance of those treads were—I clutched tighter the weapon I had found. If I could only discover a fresh charge for that, we would have no worries. A laser with power enough to melt a rock plug would stop even a bear-bison, the most dangerous beast I knew—one never approached by a Ranger unless it was first stunned.

I came back into the large cave. There the prints turned sharply to my left, again along the wall. And for that I was thankful, for if the thing did not like open space, it would have to face crossing a wide stretch of it in order to reach our camp, while the shelters had been built sturdily enough to withstand any clawed attack. We would merely have to be alert when outside their walls. I continued to follow the tracks until they vanished into a crevice, which, after a moment’s comparison with my map, I thought must be the entrance to the third passage. There in the dust were several lines of three toes coming and going, which looked suspiciously as if this third way was a regular route for the thing. Also, from the mouth of that ragged opening came such a chill that I was astounded. If the thing was reptilian, then how could it face that cold? While reptiles could not take direct sun or baking heat, yet chill made them torpid and forced some into a state approaching hibernation. It had been the study of such animals, along with other creatures, that had first given my species the “cold sleep” that, before the discovery of hyperjump, had carried cargoes of mankind in coffin-like boxes across the vast distances between one solar system and another. Here was a thing that left a reptilian track, yet seemed deliberately to choose a passage even colder than the chill cave. The latest prints, which overlaid the others, led into and not out, and I was content not to trail any farther. Instead, I went to the camp. The door of the missile control was half ajar, the interior dark, and the com-headquarters building the same. On impulse, I did not go directly to the barracks. After all, I had set no time limit on my return, and I wanted, very badly indeed, a charge for Lugard’s laser. Such might be found in headquarters. Had it been in the barracks or among the supplies, I would already have known it. I stood in the stark office room. As I closed the door behind me, the light went on as it did in the barracks. It had not in the missile station. Could I deduce from that small fact that Lugard had reason to activate part of the equipment here? We knew that the com did not work, but what else was there? I crossed to the files. They had security locks set to fingerprint release. But when I touched the first, it came open easily enough—to show an empty interior. There were sections for micro-tape and reading tape but no rolls. Thus it was with every one of them. Then I began to search the surface of the walls, looking for a slight depression that could mark another finger lock. I found four such. But if they held any secrets, they continued to guard them well. No pressure of my fingertip freed them. Perhaps they had been set to Lugard’s pattern, or even my father’s, if they had not been opened since the war began. I sat down behind the desk, laying the weapon on it. There were three drawers, all as empty as the files. Then I noted a fourth, which was a very narrow slit set in the edge of the desk top. It could be seen only when the belt torch I had neglected to switch off flashed across it endwise as I moved. There appeared to be no way of opening it, no releasing catch or button. I brought out the long iridium hunting knife that rode in my boot top and picked, with its unbreakable point, at that faint join line. It required a lot of patience, that struggle between knife point and the desk, but finally the less hard substance of the latter chipped, and I pried out a very shallow drawer. It was so shallow that it held only a single sheet of the same plasta as my map, and it was also a map. I spread it out on the desk to compare it with the one Lugard had given me. A section of it was the same, but reduced to a miniature, so that the old only formed about a quarter of my new find. Again I saw a spread of passages ahead. In each case, beyond the stoppers I had come against, were sections that extended beyond dots indicating passage walls, as if there were rooms or installations of some sort built into and outward through those. Missile pits? Or their equivalents? There were numbers so small that I found them difficult to read, which I thought were code. But since those ways were now sealed to us, it did not greatly matter what lay there. It was the chill third passage I wanted to trace. On Lugard’s map it was only slightly indicated; here it was in far greater detail. It led, according to this map, to a cave, which might be as large as the one we were now in, or perhaps two caves with a wide entrance between them. And the far side was left open as if it had not been fully

explored by the map maker, so he did not know the exact perimeter. Also this space was given an added significance with a shading in print that glistened with the lettering of code. I remembered Lugard’s story of the ice cave where he had found the alien remains. The cold coming from the crevice could mean ice. And the special marking on this map suggested importance. But nowhere was there any sign of an exit to the surface. The fact remained that two were sealed, and we might have to return the way we came. Doing that, we must clear the fall Annet had encountered. And beyond—I flinched from visualizing the climb back if the crane no longer worked. I folded the new map with the old and stowed both in my tunic. A survey of the com room, and then of the stark living quarters, brought me nothing more. But I took the weapon with me when I left, determined to search carefully through all the supply boxes before giving up hope of finding a fresh charge for it. I wanted that fiercely. We needed it. It was when I came out of the door of headquarters that I heard the calling. “Dagny! Dinan!” A shout and the echoes of it rolled around the walls. “Dagny! Dinan!” The door of the barracks stood open, the light streaming out. Annet was at the narrow tip of its radiance, calling. I saw a figure that could only be Thad moving farther out into the shadows, and one that was perhaps Gytha heading in the other direction, back toward the ledges. And I ran—remembering those three-toed tracks and fearing a scattering of our party that might lead to danger yet unknown. “What is it?” I came up beside Annet as she voiced another of those echoing shouts. She swung around, her both hands out, to clutch me by the upper arms. “Vere, the children—they’ve gone!” Then she turned her head, still holding onto me, to call, “Dagny, Dagny! Dinan!” Someone to my other side flashed a light ahead from one of the beamers. That reached to the wall of the cave, and the edge of it touched the crevice down which those sinister tracks had led. “Home—” Under the echoes of Annet’s call, I heard that other word and looked at Pritha. Meeting my gaze, she nodded as if to emphasize what she would say. “Dagny wanted her mother; she wanted to go home. She didn’t understand what happened. When Annet went to get her some food—she was asleep we thought—she ran away. And Dinan—he would never let her go alone.” That was true. Where one of the twins went, the other followed, though Dinan was usually the leader of the pair. He would not have allowed his sister to go into the dark alone. But the tracks were so to the fore of my mind, I twisted up my hand and caught Annet’s wrist. “Be quiet!” I put into that order what force I could. “Get them back—all of them!” She stared at me, but she did not call again. “We may not be alone here.” I gave her the best explanation I had ready. “All of you—get in there and stay, and put your stunners on high.” Thad came running out of the dark. “They left a trail,” he reported and then interrupted himself. “Vere! Is there a way—” I shook my head. “There is no way out. And where are those tracks?” I had hoped against hope, but my fears were realized when he waved to the cold crevice. “Annet, Thad, get the rest of the children in—and keep them so! And here—” I thrust the useless laser at Thad. “Scout through the supplies and see if you can find a charge for this. Shoot at

anything that does not signal with a torch.” He nodded, asking no questions. Annet might have, but I gave her a push. “Get them in!” “Where are you going?” “After them—” I was already two strides nearer to the crevice. “And,” I added a last caution, “keep that beamer on—pointed this way.” Light might not be any deterrent to a menace, but if it were a creature of the dark, it could help.

VIII I FOUND THE TRACKS Thad had seen. There was no mistaking the small boot-pack prints. And they lay over mine where I had halted to study that other trail. Seeing that, I winced. Had I returned at once to the barracks instead of going to search the headquarters, I might have prevented this. But there was no time to waste on might-have-beens. For a moment or two, I debated the wisdom of using my belt torch. While the light was needed, it could also attract unwelcome attention, but the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. I would not call as they had been doing, though. The cold grew worse. The walls of this tunnel were covered with frost crystals, which sparkled in the light. What had drawn the children into taking such a forbidding way, I could not understand—unless, knowing I was exploring the other two outlets, they had determined to avoid me. That was not like the twins. And I could only believe that the shock that had gripped Dagny had unsettled her usual rather timid nature. She had seemed half dazed when she had not been sleeping. As I went, I listened for sounds of the children, for they could not be too far ahead, and, I will freely admit, with a pumping heart, for anything else that would suggest alien life in this hole. Once again, after passing the rough entrance, I saw signs that this had been a used way. Projections had been lasered off; there were scrapes along the wall and a few marks of crawl treads, all signifying that not only men but perhaps one of the carts had traveled here. It was sloping down again as the cold grew. All I heard was the soft pad of my own boot soles. I saw nothing within range of the torch beam. I went with my stunner in my hand. And, as I had warned the others to do, I had turned it to the highest force, although to use that long would exhaust the charge. I tried now to remember how many extra charges I

had. There were two in my belt loops, some in my pack—but those I had left behind. How many did the others have? I should have checked that last night when we were examining the other supplies, though at that time food and water had seemed all important. I glanced at my watch. Four—in the afternoon where the sun still shone and it was day. But here such reckoning had no meaning. The children could not be very far ahead. Yet I dared not risk too quick a pace over rough surfaces. A twisted ankle could mean disaster for us all. If they could see my torch, would that make them hurry on? Or would they have had enough of the cold and dark and be ready to turn back? I longed to call, but the memory of the tracks kept me quiet. It was now a smaller replica of the road we had traveled before, for the cave passage again ended in a drop, a rough one descending not by ledges this time but by handholds. I was surprised that the twins had gone down—but they must have, or I would have overtaken them. I heard it then, muffled but still audible, a desolate crying, coming from down there. And I saw a faint glow that could only be a belt torch. Heartened, I swung over, into a cold so intense my fingers flinched from the stone. How had they come here? Luckily, the descent was not as great as the place of ledges. Part way down, I let go, to drop, lest the cold destroy all feeling in my hands, my feet plowing into loose gravel, which was a sharp way to cushion any fall. But I was up again, having suffered only minor scraping. “Dagny—Dinan?” I dared to call now. There was no halt to that minor plaint, which somehow hurt the ears and made one’s mind flinch. But I was answered; only the voice did not come from where the light glowed. “Vere, please—Vere, come and get us—” That was Dinan. “Where?” I still looked toward the torch, unable to believe that did not mark my quarry. ”Here!” Here was farther to the left and higher, if the echoes did not utterly mislead me. I waded through the scree in that direction. “Vere—” Dinan again, his voice very thin and weak. “Look out—for the thing. It went away when I threw the light. But it bit the torch and jumped on it—and maybe it will come back. Vere, get us out of here!” I shone my own torch in the general direction of the voice, and there they were. It was a ledge of sorts but a shallow one. Dagny was crowded to the back, Dinan before her as if to serve as a buffer. She was crying, her eyes staring straight before her, no tears running from them, only the moaning from a mouth that hung loose, a dribble of saliva issuing from one corner to cover her chin. Her lack of expression frightened me, for all I could think of was that she had retreated into idiocy from which we could perhaps never draw her again. There was fear in Dinan’s face also, but it was a fear that was turned outward, not bottled within him. He reached down his hand to me, grasping my fingers in his cold small ones, in that moment giving a vast sigh as if an intolerable burden had rolled from his shoulders when he was able to touch me. The perch on which they were crowded was too small for me to join them. And getting Dagny down, unless she became more aware of her surroundings and able to help somewhat, presented a problem.

“Dagny.” I pulled myself up on a pile of rubble until I was able to take both her hands in mine. They lay limp in my grasp, as if she was not conscious of my touch. She continued to stare straight ahead, and that moaning never ceased. In cases of hysteria, I knew, sometimes a sharp slap might bring the victim out of such a state. But that this was worse than any hysteria I was now certain. “How long has she been like this?” I asked Dinan. Surely, she had not made all this journey down the icy tunnel in this state. “Since—since the thing tried to get us.” His voice quavered. “She—she won’t listen to me, Vere. She just cries and cries. Vere, can you make her listen to us?” “I don’t know, Dinan. Can you get down and let me reach her?” He edged along obediently and swung down, giving me room to put an arm around his sister. Again she showed no sign that she knew of my presence. I feared she had entered an enclosure for which none of us had the key. Like Lugard, she needed professional help, which could only be found on the world we were far from reaching. Somehow I got her off the shelf; then she lay limp across my shoulder, still moaning and drooling. And I must get her back up that climb— “Vere! Listen!” I had been hearing only Dagny’s moaning. But when Dinan pulled at my arm, I did listen. And there was another sound—a rattle, which could come from a stone dislodged to click against another. The direction was deceiving, though, because of the echoes. I thought it did not come from above but from the space beyond. “Vere—the thing!” “What is it?” Best be prepared with at least a partial description of what I might have to face. “It’s big—as big as you—and it walks on its hind legs. But it’s worse than a wart-horn—all scaly and bad, bad!” Dinan’s voice grew shriller with every word, as if he could no longer control his fear. “All right. Now Listen, Dinan. You said it came for your torch—” “I don’t know—Vere, it hasn’t any eyes—any eyes at all!” Again terror spoke through him. “But it didn’t like the light. I threw the torch at it, and then it didn’t follow us. It jumped on the torch and bit it and threw it—and then—it went away.” Attracted by heat radiation I wondered? Perhaps this stalker in the dark had no need for eyes, but heat it could sense. Yes, small patches of knowledge came back to me. That was how the minute creatures found in the water caves tracked their prey, by sensors that picked up an awareness of body heat. Some of them, it was said, could be drawn from the crevices in which they dwelt by the warmth of one’s skin if you set your bare hand against the rock near their holes. If this creature hunted by heat, then it would be drawn first to the torch—and it could now be attracted by the one on my own belt. So perhaps I could use that as Dinan had luckily done with his were we caught in a tight place, though I feared trying to make the climb back without light and the helpless girl. Dinan’s torch still blazed, though now it flickered. These were stoutly made, and the beating he said it had taken might have battered it but had not extinguished its rays. Also, the sounds we heard now were from that direction. I saw no way of getting Dagny up that climb without rendering myself almost defenseless under attack. That I dared not risk. There was one other choice—lure the beast into the open and stun it. And I could not be sure of that either, even with the stunner set on high. Now I examined Dagny’s belt as she lay against me, her face turned to the rocky wall, her eyes wide and seeing nothing. Yes, she still had her torch. I unhooked it, she limp and passive under my handling as

if she were a toy. “Listen, Dinan.” So much depended now on what we could do. If I were to face this thing, I must do it on ground I could pick, well away from the children. I turned my torch up the wall we must go. Well above my head was the widest of the rest places I had found during my descent, one as good if not better than that on which the children had earlier taken refuge. “This is what we must do. I cannot risk climbing with Dagny while she is—ill—not with that thing able to attack. So, I am going to get you both up there. Then I will leave you this torch. Keep it safe. I’ll come down here again and set up my belt torch as bait. When the thing comes at it—” “But you don’t have a blaster or a laser!” His voice trembled, but he was thinking clearly. “No. But my stunner is on full ray. If I am careful—and I will be—that ought to work. It is just that we cannot climb when there is the threat of that overtaking us.” I saw him nod, and his hands closed so tightly about the torch from Dagny’s belt that his knuckles were sharp knobs peaked in his cold-blued skin. The torch he had thrown away was flickering faster, weakly, on and off. I listened, but the sounds had ceased, and I could only hope that did not mean the creature was using some natural cunning to creep through a terrain native to it. The struggle to get Dagny to the ledge I had selected for a temporary refuge confirmed my belief that it would be a long, hard pull to the top and one I dared not take with a threat of attack from behind. I must settle Dinan’s “thing” before I took the road back. Once I had Dagny wedged with her back to the cliff wall, Dinan before her to keep her there, I rested a moment, giving the boy my last orders. “I’ll go down near that torch you threw. And I’ll switch mine on and wedge it between the rocks. I’ll still be between you and the thing. Don’t switch on your light. That is very important. If it does hunt by heat, it will be drawn to my torch first, and that radiance may block out the emanations from our bodies.” “Yes, Vere.” I handed him my canteen and supplies. “Give Dagny some water if you can get her to drink. And there are E-bars in this bag. See if she will eat. She and you both need energy to combat this cold. Now, if you don’t hear anything for a while, Dinan, don’t worry. It may be that we shall have to wait.” But not too long, I hoped silently as I swung over and down. The cold here was such that the children certainly could not resist it for long. And my own reflexes were so stiff that I feared to depend too much on any agility in battle. The periods of dark between light as the other torch flickered on and off grew longer. Its glow when on was quite feeble. I worked my way near it with all the care of one on a hunting stalk, though I was not prepared here to use the terrain to the same advantage as I could have on the surface. The continued quiet bothered me, for my imagination painted a picture of Dinan’s thing crouched in some crevice, very well aware of my every movement, ready at any second to charge before I could bring my perhaps useless weapon to bear. I wedged my torch between two rocks, switched it on, and hunkered down to wait. The cold crept upon me, dulling my senses, or I feared that it did. And I had to move now and then or I would have cramped, unable to move at all. The watch on my wrist I could no longer see, and time became a long stretch of discomfort and tension. There was no sound to herald its coming—it was suddenly there! It stood, with its head a little to one side, its snout pointed at the torch, its shoulders hunched, while above frond-like strips of skin fluttered

and then stiffened, pointing to the light—or perhaps to me behind that beacon. It was a dead gray-white, and Dinan was right. There were two small swellings on the head that might mark the place of eyes it had surrendered for lack of use eons back in evolutionary time. How so great a creature could find enough here to sustain life I could not guess. My understanding had always been that cave life tended to be minute, the largest being the blind fish. But this thing was as tall as I as it stood on its hind legs. In addition, it was apparent that the bipedal form of locomotion was normal to it, for the front limbs were much shorter and weaker seeming, and it carried them curled close to its belly. Skeleton proportions added to its eerie appearance. All four limbs looked to be only scaled skin stretched tightly over angular bones. The head was a skull hardly clothed with flesh, except for its antennae, and its body as lean as if it were in the last stages of starvation. Yet it moved alertly with no sign of weakness, so that the excessive leanness must have been its natural state. As a biped, it was somehow more alarming than if it had run on four feet. We are conditioned to associate an upright stance with intelligence, though that can be far from the truth. I had the impression that I was confronted by no mindless beast but rather by something that ruled this dark underground world as much as my kind ruled the surface over its head. But there was little time for such impressions. The blind head moved in sharp jerks right and left, always centering in a point at the torch. It was a long, narrow skull with a small mouth, which was surrounded by the only excess flesh on the creature, a puckered protuberance, as if the thing got most of its nourishment by sucking rather than biting and chewing. All in all, it was something out of a nightmare. Now, without any warning, it charged. I was a second or two late in my reaction. Perhaps I had been so startled by its alien appearance that I had gone off guard. It was to cost me dear. I did swing up the stunner and press the button, aiming for its head, long since known to be the most vulnerable point of contact for that weapon. Though known to be for most living things, it would seem that now I dealt with one not to be so judged. I did not even see how it altered course in the middle of a spring. But now it headed not for the lamp but directly for me. And those arms, which had looked weak when compared to the more powerful legs, snapped up and out, the clawed paws making ready to take me. I beamed again at the head, but the ray did not slow it. Then it gave a leap that raised it to the top of the rocks behind which I crouched, and it aimed a blow at me in return. Its blindness did not appear to limit its capacity to know where I was. The raking claws tore, but not across my head by the one scrap of fortune I had. Instead, those claws peeled tunic and coverall from my shoulder halfway across my chest on the left side, leaving bleeding gashes. All that saved me was that its rock perch moved under its weight, and it had to balance. I threw myself to the right and rolled behind a rock, but now it was between me and the children. And, having made sure of me with a second blow or a third, it could take them at its leisure. So I must keep its attention and try to pull it away from the ledge, though how long I could continue such a desperate game I did not want to think. It would seem that the stunner was useless. Two full head shots it had taken—which should have been enough to addle any brains it had. But they had not even seemed to slow it. My roll brought me closer to the lamp, and I surrendered a precious moment to loosen that for a lure. Not that I needed one now. It was thoroughly aroused, wanting nothing more than to get claws on me. But still the direct rays of the lamp appeared to bother it. To my relief it did not try another of those lightning charges but gave me a small breathing space in which to pull myself together, while it squatted on the top of the unsteady rock, its head turned at a sharp angle on its narrow shoulders to follow the light it could not see but sensed in some other fashion. I wondered if it were a creature of the extreme cold so that even the limited radiance of the light was both an attraction and a source of discomfort to it. If so—if I only had a laser! But I might

as well wish for a distributor to make entirely sure of it. However, as I worked myself back, away from the cliff and the children, it leaped from the rock and followed, much as if I were piping it with Lugard’s pipe. Only it came warily. So tailed by the hunter, I came into a strange place. There were stalagmites of ice, like huge teeth, awakening in frozen glory and glitter when the lamp touched them. Parts of the floor were coated with transparent sheets of ice made up of hexagonal prisms standing vertically, their honeycombed divisions clearly visible on the surface. And, on the one portion of wall we passed where my light reached, I saw more, greater crystals with well-developed facets. At another time the wonder of it would have amazed me. Now I only tensed and feared, lest my boots slip on one of those patches and bring me down, easy meat for the stalker. The creature showed no discomfort from the cold, and I believed that this was its native habitat, though it went against all we knew of such life. My shoulder and chest were bleeding, and the chill struck through the rags it had made of my clothing. If I let it herd me in too far, then the cold might be its aid in our final battle. I raised the stunner for the third time and fired, this time not at its head but at its middle section—with surprising results! It shivered in the light of the lamp and threw up its head. Then from that puckered mouth burst an odd quaver of sound, which was answered—from behind me! I swerved in my horror, brought up against one of those ice pillars, and fell, skidding across the floor. The stunner was gone, but somehow I clung to the lamp. My body whirled around, so that I hit with my good shoulder against a broken surface. And I was looking—looking straight at objects that were certainly not native to that place. They must have been deeply encased in ice earlier, but something or someone had begun the process of melting them free. I could see shadows, shapes, all ice-covered. But what was directly before me was a rod projecting from a chest or container in which lay others like it. I seized upon that as my only hope of a weapon, though to swing it one-handed might be more than I could do. That sucking hoot was louder. I did not waste time getting to my feet, rather pulled myself around on my knees and swung up the rod. There were depressions on the surface I gripped, into which my fingers sank as I tightened hold. From the tip of the rod shot a coruscating ray of light. It struck one of the ice pillars. There was a hissing, a clouding of steam. Heat beat back at me; water boiled away. Again I swung the rod, this time with intent, pressing my fingers, and that thing that wobbled toward me across the floor was headless. But still it kept its feet! And it came on! Until I blasted it past its chest, it came. Out from between the forest of ice pillars came another. But at the sight, or sensing of light, it became more wary, circling, moving with a speed that frightened me, for my own reactions were so hindered by the cold and my wounds that I could not match it. At last I simply did not aim the rod but whipped it about, unleashing it in a sweep across the whole sector where the monster bounded. It went down, but so did other things. Pillars crashed in great knife splinters of ice, and there was a giving beyond those. It was as if the wall melted. A black hole opened there, and from it issued a rushing, roaring sound. For a time I lay where I was, unable to find the strength to get to my feet. At last, upending that miraculous rod and using it as a support, I managed to stand up. Halting and wavering, I came to the black hole the ray had cut and shone my lamp through. The light was reflected from the surface of water, a river of it, moving from dark to dark again. I began a slow progress back to the cliff, shining my lamp ahead so that Dinan would know it was I who came. “Vere! Vere!” Again I heard his call and leaned against a rock to consider what must be done. I had pressed the rags of my clothing as tightly against my wounds as I could. But blood still welled there. And

the cold had eaten me, too. I dared not make that climb carrying Dagny with no more help than Dinan could give. Nor could I leave the girl and go for help. “Dinan—” “Yes, Vere?” he responded eagerly. “Do you think you can climb to the top and get back to the camp?” It was a lot I was asking of him. Had the two monsters I had killed in the ice been the only representatives of their kind hereabouts? And would he be able to walk the distance unaided now? “I can try, Vere.” “It will have to be better than try, Dinan.” I dared not show concern; my firmness might be the one prod that would give him the will and grit to keep moving. “Now listen. I have here a weapon. I don’t know what it is—I found it back there. You point it, you press your fingers in places in its surface, and it shoots a very hot ray. I am going to give this to you. If you meet one of those things, fire at the middle of its body—understand?” “Yes, Vere.” His voice sounded steadier. Was it because I could put into his hands some defense? One of our species always feels more secure with a weapon to hand, which may be why we have clung to such for all these generations, turning first to might of body rather than might of mind as those on Beltane argued should be done. But to disarm myself—I faced around, pulling along by hand holds on the rocks about me, very unsure at that moment whether I could make the trip I must for the small margin of safety for Dagny and me. “Wait, Dinan. I must get another weapon.” I lurched forward, fearing to pause lest I fall and be unable to get to my feet again. The claw wounds burned with a fiery agony. I thought of poison and then pushed that thought resolutely from me, concentrating only on reaching the ice-bound storehouse and another of the rods. I crept past the charred remains of a monster, and my torch picked out the half-thawed wall and the box projecting, its lid thrown back. Now I stooped and picked a second rod from the chest. There were two more there. But these, my lamp told me, were different. The one I had just taken up was a steely blue, like the first I had found, the last two dull silver. I pointed the one I now held at an ice pillar and fired. Again the swift melting, the backwash of heat. Only that one chest was free. I was able to see dimly behind it massive boxes, shadows I could not be sure of. Was this Lugard’s alien treasure? If so, who had left it here and how long ago? And Lugard, had it been his efforts that had freed the one chest from the grip of the ice? A momentary dizziness nearly sent me reeling. My shin rapped painfully against the edge of the chest as I strove to retain my balance, and my torch swung close to its surface. It bore a pattern, not incised deeply, but lines to be seen under the direct light. A head formed out of those lines. The monster! No, this one had eyes, but the general shape of the skull was the same, if not so emaciated. Could—could the hunter and its companion have been left here, too, eons ago? No space traveling man says aught is impossible. We have seen too much on too many worlds that we cannot explain satisfactorily. But that picture was allied to the monsters—there was no doubt in my mind. I had no time for speculation or exploration now. I must start Dinan on his way for help. Holding tightly to the remnants of my strength, I staggered back to the cliff face.

IX AS DINAN CLIMBED, I squatted on the small ledge, my arm around Dagny. Her moans had grown fainter. Her eyes were half closed; beneath those drooping lids no pupils showed, only white arcs. The second rod I had taken from the cache lay across my lap, but I pressed my free hand against the still seeping wounds on my chest. The chill was bad. We should keep moving to stimulate circulation. But Dagny was a dead weight, and I was too weak. Also, I had killed two of the monsters, but that was not to say that more were not lurking among the ice pillars. My thinking slowed, grew muddled. I was sleepy now—so sleepy. Yet some small spark within me sounded alarm. No sleep—that was the way to extinction. I fought to rouse, to listen. It seemed to me I could hear even from here the sound of the buried river. River—water had to flow somewhere. Suppose we could trust to that stream for a road out? I knew of no major river in the lava lands. But that section of Beltane had never been fully explored. In latter days when men had been so few, and the majority of those engrossed in the labs, there had been little curiosity as to what lay outside the settlements. Only the Reserves of the animals had been patrolled to any extent. I believed that we had been the first to come this way since Butte Hold was closed. So for all the evidence we had one way or another, the river could be our way out. And if we discovered no other, it would have to be. Dagny’s weight against my good shoulder became heavier as time passed. I had forgotten to mark the hour when Dinan had left and had called from the crest that he was safely up and over. So looking at my watch told me nothing. The road back was straight—if he did not meet another blind prowler! But he was a small boy, chilled, tired. I could not reckon his speed by the same effort I would put into that journey. I fumbled one-handedly with the ration bag and brought out a stick of Sustain. In the light I saw Dagny’s face was smeared with traces of the same food. Dinan must have tried to feed her. But when I attempted the same thing, she allowed the nourishment to slip from her slack mouth, and I saw it was no use. I sucked away. The stuff had a strong, unpleasant taste, but it had been meant to fortify a man through physical effort, and I forced myself to finish the bar. Still Dagny moaned. And time crawled with no real passing at all. A man could believe endless day-night drifted by. The need for being alert was a constant spur. Finally, I learned to press tightly against the claw wounds. The pain from that touch broke through the haze in my mind. Yet as time went on and on and I heard nothing from above, though I warned myself that it was still far too soon for a rescue party to arrive, I lost

heart. Would Dinan see that they would come with the right equipment? Why had I not made plain our needs before he left? I should have given him definite orders, outlining our needs. I could not trust to Dinan to know— In that, though, I was wrong, for when they did come, I found that he had wrought better than I expected. They had the climbing ropes we had used to bring Lugard down the ledges. And Thad came down to adjust a sling about Dagny, climbing beside her inert body as those above drew her aloft. When I tried to move, I found I was so stiff and giddy that I could not help myself much, so I had to huddle where I was until Thad made the return journey and slipped the same looping over me. That pressed against my wounds, and I cried out until, with pushing and tugging, we got the support lower. What I could do to aid myself, I did, but that seemed little enough, and I progressed so slowly that I thought they must find me as much of a burden as Lugard had been. At last I was over the lip and lying face down, which was agony against the wounds until somehow I managed to roll over. They had brought one of the large beamers with them, and the wash of light from that was all about me, harsh and blinding in my eyes. So I closed them while hands searched out my wounds, pulling from them the rags I had used to stop the bleeding. I felt coolness, a blessed soothing on those painful cuts, and knew that they used plasta-heal from an aid kit. The relief was so great that it left me weak and shaking, but I opened my eyes to look at Annet and Thad. A little beyond, Gytha sat on the floor, Dagny lying across her lap, while Pritha wiped that loose, drooling mouth and tried to dribble water between the uncontrolled lips. “Can you walk?” Annet asked slowly, spacing her words as if she had need to reach the understanding of someone not quite of her world. It was not a matter of what I could do, I thought, but rather what I must. To burden them with my weight even on a level surface was impossible. Time was of the essence for Dagny. And, since they had tended my wounds, a certain amount of strength flowed back into my misused body. With Thad and Annet steadying me, I got to my feet, though that was difficult. Once up again I found I could walk, waveringly, but I was sure I could make it. “Take her”—I nodded to Dagny—“on. She needs attention.” Annet gathered the little girl out of her sister’s hold. That even her loving care could do anything for Dagny now I doubted, but she would have the best Annet could give her I knew. Perhaps that and time would heal—unless we might get top-world to the real attention she needed, again always supposing that the port and its people still existed. Would the enemy war against a child—a sick child? I found Gytha by my side. As she had done once for Lugard, she raised my good hand and put it on her shoulder, offering a support I did need. Of the rest of that journey I have only scanty memory until once more I awoke in the barracks. This time the bunks around me were occupied with sleepers. Someone moaned, another muttered, both sounds bom out of dreams. I felt cautiously across my body. My tunic was gone. My fingers slipped over the covering that healed and protected my wounds, and that light pressure raised no tingle of pain. We could thank such fortune as still smiled on us that medical supplies were at hand. I knew that under that coating I was well on the way to healthy scarring. However, I was hungry, and that hunger moved me, so I crawled to hands and knees, eased up to my feet, and reached the mess section, leaving my blankets behind. There was a dusk here. The hut had been darkened for sleeping, but it was not the complete black of the caves. I could see the cook unit and the cans of ration and other supplies ranged on a shelf against the wall. I crossed to those. Opening a ration tube bothered me. Though my wounds were better, I was still almost one-handed. So I twisted off the cap with my teeth and waited for the heat to be released in the contents. The stuff smelled so good that my mouth watered, and I did not wait for full heating but sucked it avidly.

“You—” I turned at that exclamation and saw Annet in the doorway, a blanket draped around her shoulders. Her eyes looked puffy and her face haggard, and she was no longer a girl but a woman who had hard days and perhaps worse nights behind her. “Dagny?” She shook her head and came into the room, closing the door carefully behind her. Then, as one doing one thing but thinking about another, she swept one hand over a plate in the wall and the light became brighter. “There’s caff—on the unit,” she said in a tired voice. “Press the button.” I put down the empty tube and did that, then picked up two mugs and set them on the table. She made no move to help me but sat down, putting both elbows on the table and resting her head on her hands. “Perhaps—at the port—they can do something—” But she sounded very doubtful. “What about the passages, Vere?” One-handed, I poured the caff into the mugs, surveyed her critically, and added to each two heaping spoonfuls of sweet cane crystals. And I stirred hers well before I put it down to deal with my own. “Both stoppered. We haven’t the equipment, or at least I haven’t seen any yet, to open them.” She stared unseeingly before her, not noticing the mug or me. I felt a stir of concern. Her expression at that moment was far too near Dagny’s withdrawal. “I found something else, in the ice cave—” “I know—the rod. Dinan showed it to us.” “It controls a force like a laser. Perhaps we can cut through. There is the river, also—” “River,” she repeated dully, and then with a spark of interest. “River?” I sat down opposite her, grateful for having broken through her preoccupation. Between sips of caff, I told her of the fall of rock wall in the cave and the finding of the river. “But with the rods you can burn a passage through one of the other tunnels,” she observed, dropping her hand to the mug. “That’s better than trying to follow a stream that leads you don’t know where. And if you brought down the wall of the cave with that one, it ought to work in the passages as well.” I had to admit her logic was sound. Yet somehow my thoughts kept returning to that waterway, though I agreed to try the alien weapon or tool to burn our way out. I did try, but to no purpose, for I discovered that, as with the laser we had found, it was a matter of power lack. I must have used all that remained in the ancient charge when I fought the monster in the ice cavern. When I tried it on the sealing of what seemed the better of the two blocked tunnels, it flared for several moments and then vanished. And all my working of its simple controls could not produce another spark, while the second one I had taken from the chest answered with only one quick burst. I made the trip back to the cache and brought out the other two, but neither responded in the least. Whatever else was hidden behind that murky wall of ice was as well kept from us as if we had an ir-wall between. We could chip at the ice, and we tried. But the chill and the slowness of that labor showed us that was a task requiring more time than we had—for Dagny’s sake.

With infinite care and effort, Annet managed to get enough food and water into the child to keep her alive. But beyond that she could do nothing. At last she agreed to try the river, since a return up the way we had come proved that at least one more cave-in had closed that path also. By testing we discovered that the stream behind the wall was about waist deep, but the chill of the water, plus the fact it had a swift current, argued against wading. Under our beamers the liquid was so clear that you might step into it by mistake, thinking that some stone on its bottom was above the surface and not below it. We drew on the supplies and set about constructing a raft that would ride high enough above the water to protect us and the packs we must take. In addition, we could make use of some pieces hacked free from the installations in the “missile” hut to serve as poles for guiding and for braking against too swift a forward sweep, while the climbing cords could provide anchors. Of course there was always the dark chance that we might come to passages ahead completely water-filled. For that we had an answer in a roll of water-resistant plasta-cover, though whether it would make the raft and its passengers waterproof when carried under a surface, I could not be sure until we tried. During our labors we lost all count of time. We ate, slept and worked when we were hungry, tired, and refreshed. I forgot to check my watch, and the number of days we had been underground we could now only guess at. In fact, the very mention of that subject was apt to cause arguments, until, by Annet’s suggestion, it was forbidden. But at last we had the raft ready, which was as secure a method of transportation as all suggestions could make it, and we loaded it with supplies we would need for the trails above, if we were ever fated to reach the surface of Beltane again. I counted heads in the bunks on our last night in the base. One was missing. Once more I made that silent roll call, this time using my forefinger to number each. Gytha! But where—? I had my bedroll by the door, but I had visited Annet in her curtained cubby to see if she needed aught for Dagny. Her sister could have slipped out then. Where? Surely after the adventure of the twins she was not trying exploration on her own! No calling yet. No need to rouse the camp until I did some searching on my own. I slipped out to look about. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, and then I caught the faint glow of a belt torch as if radiating from some place among the rocks at the foot of the ledged cliff. With irritation at her recklessness, for we could never be sure, though we had found no more traces, that there were no more monsters in the caverns, I started after. I planned to speak my mind sharply when I caught up with her, but as I saw where she stood, I paused. The shadows thrown by the debris were thick there until she went to work, for Gytha held in her hands one of the rods from the cache, its point to the cliff wall. From the point came a series of flashes, feeble indeed when compared to the blaze it had produced in my fight with the monster. “Gytha!” She turned her head, but she did not drop the rod. And there was a stubborn determination in her face, which at that moment clearly showed her kinship with Annet. “You said these were no good for what you wanted,” she returned defiantly, ready to justify her action. “But they’ll work for this.” She was using the two rods, first one and then the other, to incise letters on the rock. Reading tapes

have for so long been in use that manual writing had been almost forgotten. But on Beltane the lack of supplies had revived some of the ancient forms of record keeping, and Gytha had taken with enthusiasm to such learning. “ ‘Griss Lugard.’ “ She read what she had already set there. “ ‘Friend’—It is true; he was our friend. He did the best for us that he knew. And I think he would like that said of him more than to list his rank or tell other things.” I took the rod from her, and why I did it, I cannot tell to this day, but below the rather shaky letters of her “Friend” I nursed every spark from that rod and the other to add five other letters. Gytha read them one at a time as I set them into the rock. “P—i—p—e—r—Piper. Oh, he would have liked that to linger in memory, too. It is just right, Vere! I couldn’t go away and leave him without any marker at all!” Romance learned from story tapes, some would have said. But I knew she was right, that this was what must be done. And I was glad she had thought of it. As a fitting finish I thrust both of the now exhausted rods into crevices of the pile so they stood upright, staffs without pennons, markers that perhaps no living creature would see again but that we would remember down the years. As none had marked our going, so none witnessed our return. Nor did we mention it again, even to each other, but went directly to bed. In the “morning,” if morning it was above the layers of rock and soil between us and the open, we made a last check of our kits. We had drawn on the supplies Lugard and the earlier sojourners here had left. I now wore a Service tunic from which I had stripped rank badges that had no meaning. The one that fitted me best had carried a captain’s shooting star, and I wondered who had left it here and what had happened to him on or between other worlds. We made the descent into the ice cavern easily enough, having done with Dagny as we did earlier with Lugard, immobilized her in blankets and an outside wrapping of plasta that would protect her once we were afloat. We had left the raft by the broken wall, and on it were already lashed the heavier of our packs. It cost effort to launch it and then hold it steady for embarkation. When I got aboard and loosed one of the hooked lines while Thad threw off the other, I had a moment of faint-heartedness and apprehension concerning the unknown that might lie ahead, wondering if we had chosen the best solution after all. Yet I also knew that we dared waste no more time if we would save Dagny. Luckily, the current was not as swift as I thought, just strong enough to carry us along. One of the big beamers had been mounted on the prow (if a raft can be said to have a prow) so we would have a warning of dangers ahead. And Thad and I took the poles on either side to ward off any swing against the walls. The air remained cold, but as we were pulled away from the ice cave, it grew less frosty and finally became more like the temperature of the camp cave. I turned to my watch again as a check upon our passage. We had left at twelve, but whether that marked midnight or noon I had no idea. By fifteen hours we were still in passage, and while once or twice the roof had closed over us so that we had to lie on the raft’s surface, we had not had any real trouble. We were ten hours on that voyage, and I had no way of figuring how far the waters took us. But suddenly Emrys cried out and pointed up, his hand outlined against the back rays of the beamer— “A star!” At the same moment the beamer showed us a bush that certainly could not have grown underground, though we still passed between rock walls. We were aware then of fresher air to fill our lungs, not conscious of the underground taint of what we had been breathing until it was gone. So we were out of the caves, but since it was night, we had no idea of where we were. I crawled forward and loosed the beamer so that I could swing it a little from right to left. Bushes, but

they were small and stunted-looking. Rocks, among them pieces of drift that argued that at times the river must run higher here than it did at present. Then the canyon, or whatever it was in which we floated, widened out, and a long spit of sand ran out into the water. The raft made one of its half turns, since Thad was alone at the pole, and grounded against that sand bar with a thump that rocked us all. I swept the beamer to pick up a sandy beach with tufts of coarse grass growing farther up. A good-enough refuge to hold us until daylight. I said as much, and the rest agreed. We were stiff and cramped from the voyage. Thad and I fared the best because of our employment at the poles. We tumbled out onto the sand bar, and then all turned to drag our craft out of the pull of the current until we could be sure that it would not be tugged away, leaving us marooned. So we made camp, and then I looked at the compass that had been among the supplies. The second map showed nothing of the river. That must have been hidden from the mapper. But according to the compass, we had come southwest—which meant we must be over the mountains, in the general direction of the large Reserves. This was all wilderness if I was right. But there were the Ranger stations, and if I could sight some known landmarks in the morning, I thought we might find one of those. Even to be out under the stars gave me such a feeling of relief that I suddenly had no doubts that all would go better from now on. We ate and unrolled our beds. Fatigue settled down as might another blanket. I put Thad at one end of the camp, with his stunner to hand, while I took the other. I did not think that either of us was in shape to play sentry, but we must do the best we could. Sound awoke me. A loud squawk was repeated. I opened my eyes to sunlight, blinked, and saw a bird walk into water and the river close over its head. A guskaw! We might have alarmed it by our presence here, but the fact that I saw it at all meant we were in the wilderness. I sat up to look around. None of the other blanketed bundles stirred. It was quite early morning, the light grayish, and we were in a canyon. I looked back the way we had come and saw my landmark, one large enough indeed. Whitecone, a former volcano that now wore a perpetual tip of snow. So we had come over the mountains by underground ways. With Whitecone in that direction, this must be the Redwater, though the clear stream lapping the sand only a couple of arms’ lengths away had none of the characteristic crimson tinge it wore in the Reserve. I knew of no other body of water as large in this direction, and since my ambition had been to be a Ranger here, I had pored over aerial survey maps of this area. If this was the Redwater, and I was sure it was, we need only continue our voyage and we would reach the bridge, on the Reserve road. The Anlav headquarters was only a short distance north from the bridge. I gave a sigh of relief. It was good—almost as good as sighting the com tower of Kynvet. I set about getting breakfast, using the portable cook unit. Warm food would mark our triumph over the dark and the caves. One by one the others roused, as eager to press on as I now was. There would be a flitter at the station. If we could not all crowd into that, why Annet could take Dagny and as many others as possible, and the rest of us could wait on a second trip. My plans spun ahead, and then I remembered. We might have come out of darkness into light, but what had been happening here? It could be that we were no safer really than we had been at the cave camp. So I warned them that we must move warily still. I did not think they all agreed with me, however, and I made it plain by an order, though whether I could enforce that I did not know. “We do not know what has happened. For our own safety we must be sure just who or what we face. There is a chance that any trouble at the port or the settlements would not have reached here. I hope we can get help at the Anlav headquarters. There will be a com there, and with it we can learn more. But we must go carefully.”

Some of them nodded. I had expected a protest from Annet, but that did not come. Then she gave the ghost of a smile and said, “Well enough. To that I agree. But the sooner we do find out, the better.” I had wondered at her change of position. Had she at last, to herself, admitted that Lugard had been telling the truth and that we returned to danger and not to aid and comfort? But I had no opportunity to ask her. Once more we floated the raft and repacked it. But here the current was not enough, and Thad and I stood and poled until we grew too tired to push. Then Annet handed Dagny to Pritha, and she and Gytha took my place, Emrys and Sabian, Thad’s. In spite of doing the best that we could, dark came and we still had not reached the bridge. The river, now running between banks of red soil, had taken on the color that made it a proper landmark. Once more we camped, rose with the dawn, and bent to the poles. It was midmorning when the bridge came into sight. We forced the raft ashore, made a cache of most of its cargo, and took only trail supplies. Gytha, Annet, Dagny, Ifors, Dinan, and Pritha settled into hiding at the end of the bridge where there was a good cover of brush, and three of us went on, Sabian taking a sentry go at the other end of the span. There were no marks of any recent traffic on the road. Ground cars were in general use here. Hoppers too often frightened the animals. And there had been a recent storm, which had left patches of red mud drying and cracking under the hot midday sun. No marks across that, save here and there a paw or hoof print where some creature had gone. That unmarked road was disturbing, and I found myself drawing my stunner—the one that had been Annet’s—looking from right to left and back again as if I feared sudden attack from the walls of brush.

X “THIS IS THE LARGEST Reserve, isn’t it?” Thad moved closer, his voice low, as if he shared my uneasiness and feared being overheard, while Emrys kept to the middle of the road a little behind. “Yes. Anlav.” I did not believe we need fear the animals. They kept mainly to the wildest parts of the Reserve, though I did not know about the mutants that had been housed here.

Anlav had once had top priority among the mutation labs. But that had been some years ago. The curtailing of such work had made them center on the nearer Pilav Reserve for a time. We rounded a curve to see the Ranger station. Like all such posts, it had been deliberately fashioned to blend in with the natural scenery. Its walls did not run straight but were made of rough stone unsmoothed. The roof had sod and vines planted on it, growing as if their support were a natural hillock, and the vehicle park was concealed by a brush wall. I cupped my hand trumpet-fashion about my lips and gave the recognition call. But though we eyed the patch of dark that must be the door with growing impatience, there was no response. Now there was nothing but to cross the open. If the force field was up, we would know it soon enough. Warning the boys, I took the lead, my hand outstretched as a warn-off. Animals coming against that screen suffered, I had been told, a mild shock. What effect it might have on a human I did not know. But my hand met no barrier, and I came to the door, which stood a quarter open. The distrust of all about me grew with every step I took. Anlav was of such importance that the Ranger station should be manned at all times. What had happened here? The door swung in at once under my touch. I crossed the threshold warily, coming into the main room. It followed the general pattern of such places, consisting of three rooms, the largest running the full length, a combination living-office space with a cook unit at the far end. To the back would lie the bunk room and, flanking it, a small lab and storage space. I almost fell, for my eyes were bothered by the contrast between the light outside and this interior gloom. There was something on the floor to trip me. I switched on my belt torch and glanced down at a sheet of plasta, the kind generally used for storage protection. As I swept the light on around the room, I saw other signs of disorder. A chair had been pushed back so hurriedly that it had fallen on its back, the legs pointing at me like stunner barrels. There were dishes on the table with dried bits of food. And on the desk a com-ticker had gone on spewing forth report tape, which curled to the floor until the machine had finally run down. The wall rack on which large-duty stunners usually rested was empty. There was a rustling as I approached the desk. A furred thing, moving too fast for me to get good sight of it, darted out from under that piece of furniture and scurried on through the door into the storeroom. The post had not only been left suddenly, but also some time ago. I saw the control plate for the lights and passed my hand across it twice for the brightest beam. Thad asked from the doorway, “No one here?” I tried the bunk room. Small personal items were still on the hanging shelves there, and all four bunks were neatly made. Whatever had called the staff away, they had not packed. I made sure of this by trying the wall cupboards, peering at changes of uniform and underclothing. The lab-storage was neat, but there were some signs of rummaging at floor level—gnawed containers, rations spilled and half eaten out of them. I heard a warning snarl from behind one overturned box. “They’re gone,” I answered Thad’s question as I backed out of that room, not wanting to turn away from whatever might be hidden there. There are some small creatures that do not look menacing to the uninformed but are formidable if you underrate them.

There might be one possible answer. I crossed to the desk where the duty tape had twisted into coils on the floor. Though I could not judge the amount of use such a machine had in Anlav, I thought that more than one day, or perhaps two, had elapsed while the machine ground out unread reports. And there was no way of telling how long it had been since it ran down entirely. The loops of tape were in code, but it was a simple one, for condensation only. I read it without trouble—all routine dictation from Eye-Spies set up on feeding grounds and on game trails, reports of animal movements. There were two alarms about predators in grazing grounds, which would ordinarily have sent the Rangers on field duty out with a stunner. “Com—” Thad pointed to the other installation. One stride brought me to it. When I picked up the hand mike, I could hear the unmistakable thrum-thrum of an open connection. But there was no other sound carrying through. I levered the visa-plate, but that remained blank. The broadcast did not come through. “Call in!” Thad was beside me. “Not yet.” I put the mike down and fingered the button that broke the relay. “Not until we know more of who may be there—” For a moment it seemed he might question my decision, and then he nodded. “Might be alerting those we wouldn’t want to know—” “Just so. Let’s look for a flitter.” What we found in the vehicle park were a ground car and a hopper. The former had its engine box open, and tools lay in disarray as if the one working on it had been hastily summoned elsewhere. Thad went to look at it. “Putting in a new pick-up unit—just needs the tri-hookup, but it’s based.” Emrys had gone to the hopper, climbed in, and was gunning for a take-off before I could stop him. But there was no purr of answer. Perhaps both vehicles had been abandoned because they were useless for those in a hurry. “Get out!” I snapped at Emrys. “Remember what we agreed—go slow. We take a hopper, and we can be picked up on an income screen. If we use any transportation, it must be the ground car—that has a distort shield.” “And,” I added as he came out, his look sullen rather than contrite, “if you need action, get back to the bridge and bring the others in. It’s going to rain and soon.” The brightness of the morning was gone. Clouds rolled dark and heavy, and one could almost drink the gathering moisture from the air. As he went, I turned to Thad and the land car. He was right. About two-thirds of the work on it had been done. It needed only the final connections. And if that was the only repair needed, once we had completed that we would have a mode of transportation far better suited to our purpose now than any far-ranging hopper or flitter. Though it traveled only at ground level, it was equipped with screens that distorted the vision of those without so that it was, for all purposes, invisible. It could not travel fast, but it would be able to move without detection, though a radar could pick up some hint of it. Meant to get close to the animals on the open grazing ranges, it would be a type of transport unknown to the refugees, if they were now our enemies. “Close it up now,” I told Thad. “We can’t do anything until the rain is over. Let’s hurry the rest along.” We did not beat the rain, for we were all wet through when we at last dodged into the post. I laid Dagny down on one of the inner bunks, and Thad quickly switched on the heat-dry unit. When we closed the

door to the storm, we were well sheltered, even better than at the cave base. “What happened here?” Annet looked at the dishes, the chair none of us had bothered to right, and the tangle of tape on the floor. “The staff must have left in a hurry—I don’t know how long ago. Meanwhile, let’s make sure we have no uninvited guests.” Stunner in hand, I went into the lab-storage. I warned the others to keep outside and turned my weapon from maximum to low, since what I hunted was small enough to take refuge behind a box only knee high. I gave a swift cross spray of the deadening ray and then pulled crates and boxes around until I discovered my quarry, lying limp, its sharply pointed nose turned up as it slept, if not peacefully, well. It was an inflax, always a camp raider when it could get a chance, but not as harmless as it looked, for this was a male with the hollowed fangs for the irritating poison. I picked it up and laid it on a box top, while I searched for any other visitors. But this seemed to be alone. I carried it out and pointed to its armament in warning, then set it outside the door under an outcrop of the wall that would keep the worst of the storm from it. The outer air and the added whip of water would speedily awaken it. Annet had found the com and changed the dial to the range of the port. I had just time to grab the mike from her hand. “What do you—” she began fiercely. “We agreed—no rash steps until we were sure!” I reminded her. “We haven’t time to poke and pry!” She tried to force the mike from me. “We have to get Dagny to the medico and as quickly as possible. If we call, they could send a flitter.” “First, try the incall.” I thought that the fact I had not been able to pick up any broadcast might impress her. “Feeholme is the only settlement this side of the mountains. Try that!” I gave the mike to her and clicked on the proper relays. If there was any broadcasting, we could pick up the chatter, even if our wave was not narrowed to either call or reception. Again we could hear the thrum of an open beam but no whisper along it. Once more I dialed for receive, taking a chance to do so much, my hand ready to break connection instantly were we to attract the sort of attention we did not want. But the sound of the system was all that came to us. Annet stared at the mike in her hand and stooped to read the symbol above the switch I had activated. ”I don’t understand. They should be on the air. At this hour there would not just be an open circuit and no broadcast.” “Unless there was no one there—” She shook her head violently, not only in denial of my suggestion, I thought, but also against her own fears. “But the com is never untended. Try the distress call—” “No. Listen, Annet. If Lugard was right, we could trigger worse than what we have now. We agreed not to rush blindly. There is a ground car here. They were repairing it when they left, but I can finish off their job as soon as the weather clears a little. Ground cars may be slow, but they have protection which may

be of benefit to us. I promise you, as soon as we can use it, we’ll take off for Feeholme. And from there a lift over the mountains is nothing. But tell me, does this suggest to you that a normal state of affairs exists?” I indicated the room. “And when they left, they took all the armament this station had.” “All right. But as soon as we can—” “We’ll go,” I promised her. She moved away from the com and stooped to pick up the chair to set it straight again. Then she was at the cook unit, opening the supply cupboard above it, while I went to search the desk for any hint of what had happened here. There was nothing but routine record tapes. The tape from the floor, though I gave it more detailed study now, also held nothing but reports from the Reserve. The force of the storm lessened by midafternoon. As soon as we could venture out, Thad and I were back at the ground car. He proved knowledgeable and was the kind of co-worker one could wish for. But since neither of us was trained as a tech, we were not as swift about it as we might have been. We had no more than made the last connection and slammed down the cover, than a second storm was upon us, driving us to shelter in the post. That was a wild night. Perhaps our sojourn underground made it seem twice as bad as it might have otherwise. I had a sudden idea to fit another tape in the general report and click it on, centering its attention to details of what might be happening on the road between us and Feeholme. It clicked away steadily, grinding out code for downed trees, overflow of some streams, animals fleeing before the lash of wind and rain. And as the worst of these possible delays were noted, I marked them in turn on a map from the desk so that we would have preparation for trouble the next day. We started shortly after dawn. It was a wet world that faced us, but the violence of yesterday was passed. The ground car had been intended to carry equipment throughout the Reserve, and by stripping it of all but the seats, we had room for the whole party within it. I did not yet activate the distort, since I must save that for the approach to Feeholme. The road was gullied and puddled, but the treads of the car were meant to take worse than that smoothly. We ground on at a steady pace. Twice we had to detour around fallen trees, and once there were a few anxious moments when we forded a stream and the storm-swollen waters lashed around the sturdy body of the vehicle as high as the seats within, sending a few trickles about the doors to wet our feet. But I went at a slant, more with the current than directly across, and the treads bit and pulled us up on comparatively dry land. We caught sight of animals but always at a distance. At noon we pulled into the lee of a high rock spur that was capped with a pickup rod, one of the link of supervisory contacts across the Reserve. There was no sign anyone had been there, though one of the guidelines for the pickup had broken and whacked against the rod in the pull of the wind. Annet, however, had no eyes for what was around us in the wilderness, for she had at last won a small response from Dagny, who asked for water. Not that she seemed aware of those around her, but as we ate, she sucked from an E-tube, and it was not necessary to squeeze it into her mouth and then try to get her to swallow. I thought we might make it by dark and began to prepare Annet now for the further precautions I wanted to take when we reached there. When I spoke of halting the car, leaving them in it in distort while I scouted, she seemed amiable, but it was as if she humored me, not that she believed it necessary. Feeholme I had seen only once, and then it had been an in-and-out visit, a point of departure and change from the flitter that had brought me with two other Ranger candidates from the port to the hopper that carried us into the Reserve. It was larger than Kynvet because it was the only settlement this side of the

mountains. But it was no more than a village probably when compared to towns off-world. It was the headquarters for the Rangers. We crawled on, and I kept an anxious eye on the gauges. The worry over the reason for the half-repaired engine was always at the back of my mind. If transportation failed us here, it might be grave. But so far there were no signs of trouble. Twilight came early as clouds were massing again, and I put on what speed I could to race another storm. We came to the foot of a rise, and there I turned off the road, creeping into a small copse of trees and through that to the ravine they guarded. There were rocks here to form a natural wall, and I backed the car against that. If the others kept inside, they would have the best protection I could find from any gale. I did not take anything with me save the stunner, and it was my hope that somehow, somewhere, I would find a replacement for that, a weapon of greater power. I made Annet promise to keep the lights off while I was gone, while Thad took my seat at the controls with orders to switch on the distort as soon as I was out of range. Then I moved up the rise. When I turned to look back, it was as if the car had vanished, and I knew a small lift of relief. They were safe as long as they stayed inside that. There was no reason to return to the road. I cut across country, where there was more cover. Below now I could see the dark blot of Feeholme, a very dark blot for not a single light showed, and that was an immediate warning of trouble. The country around the settlement had been cleared of the thicker growth of trees and underbrush, leaving only enough to please the eye and give shade. Here the houses and the headquarters buildings were not set off by themselves but around an oval, the center point of which was a landing place for flitters and hoppers. I did not know the exact population, but I thought that those dark buildings should shelter at least two hundred. In addition to the Reserve headquarters, there was a shopping center, which had once sold off-world products but now served as an exchange for the output of various other labs and settlements—for there was a small trade in specialties from different sectors. Each of the settlements was practically self-sufficient, however—a reason for the dwindling interest in off-world trade, which had not, after the first ten years of pioneering, ever supplied more than luxuries and exotics. I came now to cultivated fields, drawing back to leap the safe-current—until I saw there was no thin blue radiance stringing from post to post. A branch pushed forward to where that current should run did not shrivel. The protection for the crops, already near harvesting, had not been activated. I saw a small herd of verken taking advantage of that. Judging by the extent of trampled and eaten plants, I guessed that this had not been their first visit here. They snorted, snuffled, and scattered at my coming, but they did not pursue their loping run far, facing about to see if I would give chase. When I did not, they shuffled back for such a feast as they had probably never known before. Dark houses, inactive field protection—it added up in a way I did not like. Then I came upon a hopper, well off the road, its nose slammed into a wall until the front was crumpled. I flashed my torch into the cabin, then flicked it off and tried to erase from my mind what that instant of light had shown me. But having seen it, I came directly into the open. That would not have been there had there been anyone left in Feeholme to care. So I tried the first house and again found—No, a single glance was enough to send me out faster than I had entered. But there was still the headquarters, and perhaps I could discover something there, if only a hint on a message tape. There were others who had died in the open. And there were scavengers from the Reserve come to feast. I avoided what I could. But I had to step over part of a skeleton to enter the building I sought. There I found men who must have died at their posts in the com room and elsewhere, but nowhere any sign of what had come so suddenly to end a settlement almost a hundred planet years

old. I made myself examine some of the dead. There were no wounds or laser burns. It would seem that these had simply fallen at their duties and died, perhaps in a matter of seconds. Gas? But what of those in the open? Or had they been the stronger and managed to crawl as far before collapse came? I could not account for such wholesale slaughter by any weapon that I knew. The off-worlders might have such. We had heard rumors of all types of things developed for the exploitation of enemy planets, things that would remove a population and leave their world empty. Had the refugees put into service such a one here—perhaps trying it out before they turned pirate as Lugard had foretold some of the remnants of the tattered fleets would do? But why such wanton slaughter? I stood in the com room. The circuits were still open as they had been when a dead or dying hand slipped from the control board. I saw the steady light of clear channel on the board. Stepping closer, I read the symbol for Haychax over the mountains. But all that came through the amplifier was the same thrum-thrum we had picked up at the Ranger station. At any rate, this town could give us no aid. And I was not about to lead our party into what lay here. But I did search for weapons. In the end, I found three more stunners and one long-shot laser meant for ground clearing, but that was too bulky to transport, and when I turned it on, the glow was so reduced that I knew it near extinction. The fact that in a settlement that supplied three Reserves these were all to be found in the way of arms was another disturbing point. It would seem there had been other searchers before me. When I came into the store place, I found evidence of that. I faced wild confusion. Boxes and containers had been ripped open and much of their content wastefully spilled and trampled. The tracks in some of the wastage were signature enough to tell me that no Beltane settler had done this, for two or three boot prints were so clearly marked that there could be no mistaking—space boots. The looters must have been from the refugee camp. Had they also caused the death of the town? I went down on hands and knees and tested with fingertip the leakage of a broken canister and decided it had begun perhaps only a day earlier, while the town had met its fate long before that—perhaps even on the same day we had gone underground, or shortly thereafter. Now I foraged in what was left, finding a drop bag meant to be parachuted to Rangers in the Reserve where there was no landing place. Into that I packed small cans and ration tubes. We had brought little enough out of the caves, and if we had to stay away from settlements, we would need all we could find. It was too heavy to shoulder when I left, so I had to drag it after me, but it had been made for hard usage, and I did not worry. I had come out of another door into the landing place of the settlement. Here again was a scene of wanton destruction. I dared to use my torch, though only in quick flashes. What I saw were burned flitters, at least two of them. Half a dozen hoppers had been worked over with lasers until they were masses of half-melted metal. There was not one remaining unwrecked transport. I had seen enough of Feeholme—the tomb that Feeholme had become. There were two other Ranger stations on this side of the mountains, but I doubted whether we could find help at either. And if we returned to Kynvet, it would only be by taking the car as far as we could run it, then hiking over the mountains on our feet. But perhaps there was no reason for such a return— Dragging my pack of supplies, I went back across the fields. I was in the shadow of a copse of trees when I saw a spark in the sky. It was well away from Feeholme, but it was no star—rather the light of a flitter. Its course was erratic, moving up and down, side to side, as if whatever hand lay on the controls was either inexperienced or under some difficulty. I headed to where I had left the car, and I hoped that those I had left there would not strive to signal the pilot. What I had seen here made me more determined than ever that we must keep our guard.

Rain broke then, cold and heavy, and I found the bag a greater weight as I struggled up the rise. I could no longer see the light of the flitter. There was a roll of thunder and clashes of violet lightning, which made me flinch involuntarily and try to run.

XI I LAY BELLY DOWN under the very dubious shelter of a bush, my head pointing downslope toward the car I could not see as long as the distort shield was up. The rain water ran down my back, gathered in the hollow of my belt when I moved, and then, in sudden icy jerks, trickled down over hips and thighs. Though it was summer and the days were warm enough, this stormy night held the threat of coming autumn, and I wanted nothing so much as to be under cover. Yet the sign of that flitter had made me doubly cautious. Any signal I gave those waiting below might betray us. Cupping my hands about my torch, I made a funnel so the ray I needed would be hidden to anything above, though no flyer with a grain of sense would keep a light-bodied flitter aloft amid such tossing winds. Now I pressed the button on, off, on, off. As far as I could see they ought to be able to pick up those flashes easily. But when nothing moved below, uneasiness boiled in me, and I was ready to go charging down with a stunner. My ever-present fear was that they had attempted to signal the flitter with the car com, and if they had been successful, who knew now what we might have to face. There was a flickering below, and then the dark bulk of the car came into view. No lights on in it—so my warnings had taken root to that extent! I got to my feet and went down, dragging my heavy bag. “Vere?” Annet’s voice in anxious inquiry. “Yes!” I scrambled to the door. “Let me in—quick!” I thrust myself in as I might have charged an enemy-occupied room. There were startled protests as I forced a place for my wet self. “That flitter—you did not com it?” I leaned across Annet to thumb up the distort once again, only breathing easily when that defense was on.

“No,” Thad answered. “You said—” “Why shouldn’t we?” Annet’s demand overrode his answer. “He held the mike where I couldn’t reach it, or I would have. Why—what has happened, Vere?” I was so tired that I could no longer fence. After all, they were going to find out sooner or later, and they should have been bright enough to guess for themselves with all the clues we had had. “I found a dead town,” I replied flatly. “You mean everyone gone?” She sounded more than startled—disbelieving. “But where did they go—to the port, over the mountains?” “I said dead, not deserted. A town of the dead—” I felt her stir beside me, as if she cringed away to the extent anyone could move on the overcrowded seat. “But how—killed?” “Those I—I looked at showed no signs of laser or blaster. They had apparently just dropped at their duty posts. But the town is dead. And its store has been looted at a later time. I brought two stunners—the rest of the weapons are gone.” “Then Lugard was right!” Thad cut in. “The refugees attacked—but why kill everyone?” “No!” Annet was shivering. “No! It can’t be true! Vere, we’ve got to get back to Kynvet. Take a flitter—there must be flitters at Feeholme.” “There were flitters. Someone systematically destroyed them. Lasers had been used on those—on hoppers, too. There is no workable transportation left.” “Then—then what are we going to do? Dagny—” “We have this car, and I brought all the supplies I could that were light and yet highly sustaining. Our best move now is to head back into the Reserve, cross the mountains—” “That flitter—” Thad asked. “Do you suppose it was the looters?” “It could be our people, hunting survivors,” Annet said. “If it was and we didn’t com them—” Her tone was accusing. ”Did you ever seen a normal flitter following such a flight pattern?” Thad asked for me. “There was something wrong with the machine or the pilot. Do we go back the way we came, Vere?” It was a temptation. There was the Ranger headquarters where we could find shelter, perhaps use it for a base while we scouted a possible route over the mountains again. However, it might well be that any structure would serve as a magnet for looters. There were maps in plenty; they could have found one in Feeholme that located every station in the Reserves. “I think not. We strike due southeast from here, into the hill country. There is a reception point for mutants at Gur Horn. We can head for that—perhaps pick up more supplies there.” We would go nowhere this night, however, uncomfortable as it would be; rather we would try to shelter and rest in the car. I was in no mind to switch on driving lights, which would be beacons in the dark. Rough cross-country travel was impossible, and to seek the roads was to ask for discovery. I thought Annet would raise opposition to this decision, but she did not. Instead, she set about reorganizing our

seating so as to give maximum comfort in our minimum of space. Some of the food was shared out. We slept, I think out of sheer fatigue. Twice I was awakened by cries from the sleeping children and knew that they dreamed. But I did not, and for that I was thankful. Annet was quick to soothe and comfort. The last time, when Pritha whimpered herself half awake, Annet reached out her hand as if seeking support, and I grasped it. There was no other sound from Pritha, but Annet turned her face nearer mine and whispered, “Vere, can we get over the mountains?” “If we take one step at a time, we can. This is summer; the Reserve pass will be open. If we use that, we shall come out not too far from Butte Hold.” Then I hesitated, remembering those visitors Lugard had faced down with a far more formidable weapon than any we possessed. If a hint of treasure had drawn them to the Butte, they might be there now, hunting for Lugard’s rumored find. ”Vere—” Her whisper was now such a thin thread of sound I could hardly hear it. “There was something—” “What?” I prompted when she did not continue. “You know, at Yetholme, they did controlled experiments for the forces.” I could hear her swallow as if the words were being forced out of her. “That was years back, and didn’t they close down entirely?” “Everyone said so. Dr. Corfu—you know what he did.” “Took a double cold-sleep pill and never came out of it.” “He—he wouldn’t go ahead with their last experiment, and they pressured him terribly. I heard Mother—she had seen the initial steps. They were working on a mutated virus. Vere, it would kill off intelligent beings—it affected the brain—but it left a world intact, to be taken over later by jump troops. It had no affect on animals unless they were specially sensitized to it. Vere, what if—?” Again I remembered one of Lugard’s warnings. There might be secrets here which would-be raiders would welcome as part of their armament for future attacks. A virus with such properties, seeded in secret across an unsuspecting city, even a continent, or a world, a period of